


Castle in the Sand

by DesdemonaKaylose, neveralarch



Series: Banners from the Turrets [12]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Angst, M/M, POV Outsider, Peace, Polyamory, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Wedding Planning, contentious cultural concepts, drift is here but he's on parole, ratchet is here and he's Fucking Pissed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2020-12-14 19:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21021023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose, https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch
Summary: Rung has always been the gauze holding Megatron and Starscream together, but eventually wounds heal and it's time to rip the bandage off.Everyone knows triads are unstable.





	1. Build Your House Upon the Sand

**Author's Note:**

> This story follows directly from To Be Securely Held, and while you can read this without reading that, you'll almost certainly enjoy it more with the added context. Also this series' ongoing structure is a wreck, and it needs guard rails. But we're not just gonna NOT show you the concept we've been talking about non stop since August.

On Cybertron, the days are long. Their ancient planet circles its star in short revolutions, turning lazily on its ever-shifting axis as the years flash by. In order to conserve power during the dark ages, when the War of Primes had devastated the world to the point of near cultural decimation, the factories and offices had taken to closing down during the night cycle. Modern Cybertron had returned to that schedule now that their latest great war was over, at least until the government found or created enough energon to finally put an end to rationing. Rung, who had lived through both the War of Primes and the dark ages—although it grew more fuzzy in memory every day, as his recollection began to decay around the 6 million year mark—quite enjoyed the familiar sensation of waking up from a long recharge to the light of the sun dawning over the city.

Rung stretched sleepily, burrowed in the massive three mech recharge slab that had been specially commissioned by Megatron after the second time that Starscream had finagled his way into the apartment (on Megatron and Rung’s date night, no less) and fallen asleep sprawled in their old berth. Megatron had refused to recharge with Starscream’s wings twitching against his face, and Rung had refused to allow Megatron to shove Starscream onto the floor. The Constructicons had carried the new slab in the very next week, although they’d had to widen the doorways to bring it in.

Rung loved this berth. It felt like a symbol of their success, and it also felt luxuriously soft. Although Megatron insisted that he needed only the bare metal slab, Rung and Starscream had independently seen fit to outfit it with enough padding to all but swallow a minibot.

In the kitchen, there was a sound like someone hitting a titanium countertop with an enormous fist. It was, in fact, almost certainly Megatron hitting the titanium countertop with his enormous fist. The rumble and pop of arguing voices was a tip-off.

Rung eased to his feet, wandering over to the bedroom door to lean against the frame and watch the minor chaos unfolding in the kitchen.

Starscream’s six vat home distillery was chugging and bubbling, pink and lavender and twirling glass taking up the entire east countertop where he’d left it several months ago “to pick up later” and then proceeded to never take home.

Megatron had a finger pointed at Starscream’s chassis, his optics blazing red light. “You are _ not _coming to the premiere.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Starscream leaned back in the specially-made chair he’d deposited at the head of Rung and Megatron’s dining table after days of complaining about how none of their furniture accommodated his wings. “You always invite me to the premieres.”

“I invite Rung,” snapped Megatron, looking very much as if he wanted to hit the countertop again. “I don’t understand why that guarantees your presence.”

“Well, who else is he going to take as his plus one?” asked Starscream. “Does he know any other handsome senators who can lend cachet to your quaint little community theater?”

_ Bang._ Oh, Rung hoped they wouldn’t have to replace the countertop this time. Megatron did try to pop out the dents, usually after Starscream disappeared off to his office or (more rarely) to his own apartment, but the metal was looking more warped with every passing day.

“You laughed at _ Mortilus’ Wake,"_ said Megatron.

“I’m a very responsive audience.” Starscream got up to pour a glass of his personal energon, distilled and filtered until taking a sip was like being kicked in the teeth with circuit boosters. “You should appreciate me more.”

“It’s a _ tragedy."_ Megatron leaned over the fizzing distillery, unwisely placing his nose within Starscream’s biting radius. “You made Sixshot forget his lines.”

Starscream leaned forward to match. “Sixshot is either a brilliant comedian or the most incompetent actor you’ve ever trained. Which would you prefer?”

Rung let his helm rest against the doorframe. Starscream and Megatron were so close, so caught up in their passion. If Megatron moved just another inch they could be kissing, grasping at each other’s frame, completely focused on each other and ignorant of Rung’s gaze. Rung’s interfacing array pinged at him, not urgent, more of a lazy reminder that it was there and pleasantly well-used. Starscream had come home late last night, let himself in with the code he’d wheedled out of Rung the last time Megatron had reprogrammed the locks, and woken Rung up with hungry kisses and his valve already uncovered and damp against Rung’s thigh. It hadn’t taken long before Megatron was sleepily stroking Starscream’s wings, while Starscream tried to arch back into Megatron and grind down against Rung without losing his balance and toppling off the slab. Rung wondered if Megatron was also remembering last night, if he was tempted to catch Starscream’s chin and claim the kisses that Rung had monopolized then.

“Sixshot is a versatile leading mech,” growled Megatron.

Starscream laughed. “He’s a clown!” He jerked a thumb in Rung’s direction, which was the first indication he’d even noticed Rung was present. “Rung agrees with me.”

Megatron glanced over at Rung and smiled. “Please, he’s not an _ idiot. _He agrees with me. Don’t you, Rung?”

Rung straightened up, trying and failing to shake the image of Megatron dragging Starscream over the abused countertop and fucking him there, both of them moaning as the energon distillery shattered across the floor. “Yes, dear,” he said.

“You see?” Megatron crossed his arms and settled back with a heavy whir of hydraulics.

“Don’t be such a dimwit,” said Starscream. “He was obviously agreeing with me.”

In moments like these, Rung wished very much that he could convert these mornings into data the way that a memory drive might: in perfect clarity, full of color and sound, never to age or fade into a graveyard of lost memories. Something to keep, something that would hold its warmth even when the rest was gone.

Rung tried to hold himself in the moment, letting thoughts of the future slide off him with practiced ease. The bubble of the distillery; the tint of the slanted morning sunlight; the way Starscream’s wings twitched as he anticipated Megatron’s next conversational strike. 

Maybe Rung couldn’t keep them, but he could hold these things for now, and let them run only slowly through his fingers.

Across the counter Megatron finally snatched out for Starscream, but at the last moment Starscream—optics gleaming—danced out of his grasp. Megatron’s lips quirked, not angry, not offended, but playful in a way that still surprised Rung even as it became part of their morning routine.

_Ah,_ Rung thought, with an almost unbearable warmth surging in his core, _ peace. _

\----

When Starscream and Megatron had both landed in Autobot custody after the same devastating loss in Tesarus, the war had begun its odd and inexorable descent towards peace. Soundwave was also locked in the Autobot cells; Shockwave wasn’t particularly interested in mounting a grand rescue or even leading the army at all. Rung, of course, was in custody with everyone else—although he wasn’t sure what circumstance would ever qualify _ him _ for command of the Decepticons. None of the lesser commanders still at large had a good enough grasp of the strategic situation to make a competent attempt at a new offensive, or they _ did _grasp the strategic situation and were trying to lay low until it turned in their favor. By the time Megatron had been convinced to sit down with Optimus and discuss what a conditional surrender might look like, the actual pedes-on-the-ground fighting had died down to a wary trickle.

They had all held their breath in that prison ship, Autobot and Decepticon both, and then—blinking into the watery sunlight of their shell-blasted home world—they had held their breaths through the protracted negotiation process, and then the rebuilding effort, and then the first wave of paroles… and now, at last, it seemed that they were all unshuttering their vents at the same time. Peace had broken like a summer storm, filling the sand wastes with shallow, clear pools reflecting a sky at last empty of warships.

Rung’s morning commute to the hospital took him through Tetrahex the long way, so that he could admire the careworn facades of the yet-unrenovated old quarter where, if certain bills made it to the voting floor, modifications for post-war use would soon be made.

Tetrahex: rich and antiquely charming, a city of history with a long, severe memory. The grand and intricate frame of the Opera House still held from six million years before, the ancient courthouse was graffitied and crumbling but still proud among the dust. Tetrahex had remained a neutral city throughout the war, right up until the night that the entire population had evacuated in droves, having heard in the dark hours of the morning that some strange new warhead was about to be tested on them. Of course the warhead had never fallen; there had been a skirmish in low orbit that same morning, and the payload had been diverted into the wastes of the Rust Sea.

Sometimes in the warm hollow of their luxurious three mech berth, Rung lay awake wondering what turn history might have taken if the payload had been delivered on schedule. Where would he have been that morning? In his office? In Megatron’s berth? When would he have been informed?

They had all teetered so far over the brink of annihilation that at times, still, the scope of it took his fuel pump in a vice and _ squeezed._

Assuming that Optimus Prime would naturally push for the new seat of government to be held in Iacon, City of Primes, Megatron had marched into negotiations hellbent on wearing down the entire Autobot faction at any cost with a will easily as iron as the prison shackles he was still wearing. He’d given an impassioned speech, made several begrudging concessions, and only discovered at the conclusion of the session that Optimus had never particularly cared for Iacon and would have said so earlier if Megatron had allowed him to get a word in edgewise.

Of course no Autobot would allow the capitol to fall on Kaon—a more purple city there had never been—and Rodion had been too much of a recruiting ground for Decepticons for it to sit easy with them either. Out of all the remaining cities on the planet, only a handful had both the remaining infrastructure and the lack of clear faction ties to be viable for a fresh start.

So Tetrahex it had ended up being. Rung hadn’t felt particularly emotional at the news, except in the way he’d hungered for any hint that peace was drawing nearer, that the months spent in the Autobot prison ship would draw to a triumphant conclusion. But he had grown to love the city now. For itself, and for what it represented: a chance for a fresh start, the burdens of their old society lightening with every day.

Rung bid good morning to the EMTs having belated breakfast at the bar across the road from Tetrahex New General, hopped out of the way of a speeding ambulance, and swung up into the lift just in time to nearly have his antenna caught in the closing doors. The speed of his entry had him bouncing off the chassis of a bulky nurse, who caught him swiftly by the scruff and set him down on his feet again.

“Morning Director,” the nurse said, somewhat warily.

The hospital was too big for even Rung to know every nurse and orderly by name, but by now he recognized most of their faces with ease. This one was part of the unified expansion program; he’d come in with a class of other Autobot hopefuls, willing to give a hospital run by a former Decepticon officer a chance if it meant the opportunity to get a medical education. The fact that the Autobot CMO was prominently on staff probably went a long way towards bridging those reservations. And for some, even the possibility of learning a trade outside of their alt-class was temptation enough to risk the absurd rumors of mnemosurgery and unethical experimentation that still hung around the Decepticon medical division despite Rung’s best efforts.

“Good morning Scuttle,” Rung said, reaching up and fixing the ID tag magnetized to the boatformer’s prow. “How’s Ward Gamma running?”

“Uh.” Scuttle’s delicate faceplate shifted through several expressions before settling into blunt determined honesty. “Well you know, everybody does their best, but there’s never enough budget to replace the equipment when it breaks. Some of this stuff is older than Nova Prime.”

“I know,” Rung said, and offered his most commiserating smile. They had mostly built on top of the old general hospital, sourcing their basic equipment from the ruins. It hadn’t been in spectacular shape even before the vorn of new use. “I won’t make any promises, but have your ward manager send me a requisition and I’ll see if I can squeeze any shanix out of steel here.”

Scuttle nodded, but his optics had started to narrow. “Hey boss,” he said, with a kind of furtive hesitancy, “aren’t you close with Senator Starscream? I mean I wasn’t ever a ‘con—” he said this in a defensive rush, chest armor puffing out, “—but you’re buddies from back in high command, right? Couldn’t you just have him do something about the budget? He’s greasy enough, beggin’ your pardon, he could probably wax some palms for you.”

Rung gave him a bemused look, wondering if it would be worth the inevitable kerfuffle to mention that last night Starscream had crashed into recharge with Rung’s spike still hilt deep in him. It was personal policy to keep his home life and his work life strictly separated, but he was admittedly curious as to what exact expressions that statement might elicit from Scuttle’s faceplate. 

The elevator opened into Ward Gamma before Rung could do something he’d undoubtedly regret. Scuttle smiled awkwardly as he left Rung to ride the rest of the way to the administrative floor alone. “Have a good shift, Director. Hope you can find that cash.”

“Good shift,” said Rung. “I’ll do my best.”

The doors closed, and Rung caught his own smile in the glass of the lift as he glanced out to watch the dwindling mechs on the street below. Scuttle clearly had an optic for problem solving, but a complete lack of knowledge about Rung’s unique circumstances. It wasn’t as if Rung had any influence on _ Senator _Starscream. Starscream’s political machinations were arcane, cryptic, and completely out of Rung’s purview—he couldn’t hope to understand their complexities even if he’d wanted to interfere. Starscream had so many balls in the air, Rung sometimes wondered at how he could keep from dropping them on his own helm.

The perils of being the only high-ranking Decepticon with any aptitude or ability to participate in politics. That had been one of the most contentious concessions on either side. Megatron, Soundwave, and the still-imprisoned Shockwave were legally barred from political office or even voting in elections, as were Optimus Prime and any future Primes. Starscream had escaped disenfranchisement due to his cheerful willingness to cooperate with the Autobots while he’d been imprisoned, and Megatron’s surprisingly fervent argument that no mech was better suited to higher office than ‘that conniving little glitch.’

The elevator dinged, and Rung stepped out into the lobby. His assistant Deadlock was drowsing at his desk, but Rung didn’t wake him. He had the impression that Deadlock was struggling to adjust to peace, and Rung knew those kinds of struggles often interfered with stable recharge patterns. Especially when one was still on parole, under the constant threat of being returned to an Autobot-run prison. Rung didn’t have any meetings scheduled today, anyway—he’d found that the hospital ticked along nicely if he didn’t try to needlessly insert himself into the gears. It would just be Rung, about a thousand requisition forms, and his peaceful office.

Rung couldn’t wait.

\---

His comm buzzed about five hours later, and Rung answered it without sparing the attention to see who was calling.

“Hospital Director Rung,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“Are you fueling at your desk again?” asked Megatron. “Or can I convince you to take an actual break and join me at Mixmaster’s?”

Rung looked guiltily at the ward inventories he’d spread across his desk. There wasn’t actually space to set a cube. “I’m afraid I don’t have time today. Maybe you could ask Starscream if he—”

“I called _ you,"_ said Megatron. “I’m not interested in having lunch with Starscream. And he’s not invited to the premiere. You’ll have to find another paramour to drag along.”

Oh, so Megatron was still fuming over this morning’s argument. It was adorable, how fixated he could get on Starscream’s petty insults. “I’m not exactly drowning in lovers,” said Rung, smiling at the thought. “But I could ask if Aglet wants to experience some culture. Our book club is on break, and he’s been complaining that he doesn’t have anything to do besides work.”

“Hm.” There was silence on the line for a moment. Rung could hear mechs working in the background, Soundwave telling someone to move a piece of the set. Rung ached for a moment to be there, to sit in the empty audience and watch Megatron stride around and command and cajole his actors into the best performance of their lives. It was selfish, but Rung thought his favorite thing about peace was being able to enjoy the strength of Megatron’s _ presence _ without worrying about the consequences.

“I love you,” said Rung, impulsively.

Megatron laughed. “Alright, bring Aglet. The premiere’s in two days, don’t forget. You’ll be home for dinner tonight?”

“Of course,” said Rung, and tried not to be disappointed that Megatron hadn’t said it back. Megatron expressed himself in other ways, that was all.

Rung gave himself a few moments to re-center himself after Megatron hung up, and then turned back to his work. There was always more to do.

About an hour later, Deadlock brought Rung a cube of energon and a packet of rust sticks, flashing a shy smile before retreating back to his receptionist’s desk. _ Such a nice mech, _ thought Rung, fondly. Rung was so lucky to be surrounded by them.

\---

Ratchet burst into Rung’s office right around the end of the second shift, just like clockwork. Ratchet probably didn’t like to think of himself as predictable, but he always worked himself to bare struts all the way through first _ and _second shift, at which point First Aid would force him to sit down and drink some energon and Ratchet would reluctantly check his inbox. Then he’d notice some piece of apparently intolerable administrative business and would rush over to Rung’s office to yell about it. Deadlock had given up on trying to stop Ratchet once he’d realized that asking politely, impolitely, and with a knife in his hand all had the same complete lack of an effect.

“Hello,” began Rung, morbidly curious as to how far he’d get into the pleasantries this time. “How has your day—”

“So were you gonna tell me we’re building a new wing?” Ratchet demanded. “Or was I just supposed to see the news headlines and figure it out myself?”

“You were invited to the board planning meeting last quarter,” Rung said, settling his chin into his palm. “I’m not surprised you didn’t attend, considering you had three surgeries scheduled.”

Ratchet hrumphed. “There’s nobody else on staff who can perform partial frame transplants.”

_ And whose fault is that? _ Rung didn’t ask. It wouldn’t help to rehash the reasons why the majority of the nursing and psychiatry staff were still Decepticon-trained, while the surgeons were limited to Ratchet, Pharma, and maybe First Aid when Ratchet allowed the scalpel to be pried out of his hand. Ratchet _ was _getting better about delegating—he’d even taken a day off last month to sleep. 

“I sent you the minutes,” said Rung, instead. “And I left the Senate budget proposal in your mailbox.”

Ratchet waved that away. “I’m not talking about the proposal, we all knew it was more a fantasy than a real thing. Fifty million shanix for expansion and new equipment? When half the senators are talking about rebuilding the primal palace and the other half want to build enough planetary defenses that our orbit would deform from the weight? Not a chance.”

Rung sighed. He didn’t want to admit that Ratchet had a point, but he hadn’t been particularly optimistic when drafting the proposal in the first place.

“So _ why,"_ said Ratchet, “is the news feed telling me that Tetrahex General is getting _ sixty _ million in the new funding bill?”

Rung jerked upright, and his vision faded as he accessed the news feed. Yes, there it was. Sixty million—not the largest appropriation, but about eight times what had been allocated to the ‘historical preservation commission’ that kept trying to find pieces of their history that everyone could agree were worth preserving. There had been an amendment proposed right at the last moment by Senator Rattrap, which meant—

“Starscream,” said Rung.

Ratchet pulled a guest chair away from Rung’s desk and dropped into it. “Look,” he said. “We can’t run the hospital like this.”

“Like what?” asked Rung, only half-listening. Starscream hadn’t even _ mentioned _ the funding bill, they never talked about—no, that wasn’t true. Starscream had said something last week about making sure it was worth Rung’s while if he sucked Starscream’s spike well enough, don’t you have a request before the Senate, Rung? Wouldn’t you like some _ help _with that, Rung?

Starscream had gotten defensive when Rung asked him what he was talking about, just mumbled something about how he’d thought Rung _ liked _roleplaying before dragging Rung into a kiss that ended the conversation. Megatron had walked into the berthroom a few minutes later, and Rung had forgotten all about what had happened before Megatron put his hands on Rung’s thighs and pulled them as far apart as Rung’s joint structure would allow.

“Like a, a mafia,” said Ratchet. “Like all that matters is who you know and what favors you can call in. I don’t like feeling like I’m working for the Decepticon high command.”

“Oh?” Rung couldn’t quite hide the hurt in his voice. “Well, we can change that whenever you like. I’ve told you a hundred times, I will happily co-chair the board with you if you’ll reduce your workload on the floors. Or if you want my resignation—”

“No!” Ratchet grimaced. “No. You’re the best hospital director I’ve ever had, Rung. It’s just that you come with all this, this baggage.”

_ Baggage._ Rung folded his arms. “We talked about this before we even drew up plans for the hospital. We talked about this while I was _ in prison._ You said you didn’t want to be stuck behind a desk doing administration when there were lives you could be saving, and it was _ you _who said that it wouldn’t matter who was a Decepticon and who was an Autobot under the new unified government, or it wouldn’t really be unified at all.”

“I know, I know.” Ratchet dragged his hand over his face. “It’s just—I keep expecting to see Megatron in one of the wards, strangling one of my patients.”

“I see,” said Rung. “You have a problem with my relationships.”

_"Primus." _Ratchet took a couple deep vents. “I’m not expressing myself well.”

Rung forced himself to relax. He knew that it pained Ratchet to admit weakness, and Rung had long ago learned to be gracious in the face of another mech’s temper.

“Relationships,” said Ratchet, like he was sounding out a foreign word. “I don’t have a problem, I just don’t get it. If you told me Megatron and Starscream were conjunxed, sure, they deserve each other. But you’re a nice mech, Rung. I think of you as a friend, and I don’t have many. I don’t like seeing you getting tangled up in whatever messed-up games Megatron and Starscream are playing with each other.”

“I—” began Rung, and then realized that he didn’t know what he was going to say and had to start over. “That’s very kind of you, but—”

“Everyone knows triads are unstable,” continued Ratchet. “It makes me worry, seeing how invested you are. How involved they are in your life. And I hate to say it, because it feels like a low blow, but I gotta be honest with you. It makes me worry about what could happen to the hospital, when this all blows up.”

It felt like someone had poured solvent into Rung’s spark. He forced himself to speak despite the cold rising tide that threatened to drown his voicebox. “I would never allow my personal life to interfere with Tetrahex General.”

“I don’t know if it’s a question of _ allow,"_ said Ratchet. “Not when you’re living with Senator Screechy and the slag-maker himself.” He got up from his chair. “Look, I’ve probably said more than I should. Congrats on the funding. I should’ve said that first, instead of coming in swinging. We’ll be able to do a lot of good with it. Just—just think about where it came from, all right?”

Rung nodded. His spark still felt wet and dim even after Ratchet closed the office door behind him.

\---

After Ratchet left, Rung’s carefully-arranged schedule fell into disarray. There was a board meeting _ tomorrow,_ and he didn’t think anyone would be interested in discussing long-term strategic planning when there was senate shanix in the news feeds. He needed to provide them with a plan for the funds, for hiring an architect, for hiring a construction guild, for hiring all the new medics they’d need. Maybe just for training the new medics they’d need from scratch, if they couldn’t convince any colonists to move. Oh, but surely the relocation bonuses would tempt a few. If he could only find the right scale of incentives—

Rung reached for another datapad and nearly knocked a stack off his desk. He leapt half-over the desk to haul the stack back in, venting hard. He couldn’t afford to come to the board meeting unprepared. The board was prone to infighting if they weren’t given direction, especially with an even split between Autobot and Decepticon voting members. Rung wanted to keep the literal back-stabbing to a minimum.

“Boss?” Deadlock cracked open the door and leaned in. “It’s end of shift.”

“Is it?” Rung eased himself back into his chair, still clutching his datapads. “All right, just leave the lights on when you go.”

Deadlock hesitated, gnawing on his lip. “Lord—I mean, Megatron said he didn’t want you working overtime every night again this week.”

“Oh.” Yes, that sounded like Megatron. He couldn’t tell Rung that he loved him over comms, but he was happy to order around Rung’s administrative assistant and dictate how Rung lived his life. Rung began sorting through his datapads to find the ones he really needed to put together a working budget at home. He didn’t want Deadlock to feel obligated to stay, just because Megatron had decided he somehow had the _ right _to—

“Did Ratchet say something to upset you?” asked Deadlock. “Do you want me to take care of him?”

Rung glanced up, his brows drawing together. Deadlock gave him a significant look and drew one claw across his throat.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Rung dredged up a smile. “You _ like _Ratchet.”

Deadlock flinched back. “I—That’s scrap, I don’t know—”

Rung got up. “Can I ask you something terribly unprofessional?”

Deadlock shrugged, still looking ready to deny having ever looked at Ratchet with anything but a pure-sparked desire to overthrow the medical hierarchy.

“Do you think my relationship with Megatron and Starscream is,” Rung hesitated, feeling the ugliness of the word on his tongue, _"unstable?" _

“Uh.” Deadlock’s expression took on an even more hunted cast. “Yeah. I mean, no. I mean—look, Screamer’s always been kind of a vindictive cogwaffle, and Megatron’s always been very, uh. Focused on his goals. I figured eventually Megatron would tell me to assassinate Starscream for the good of the cause, if you want me to be honest with you.”

Rung’s spark sloshed in his chamber, feeling again that sense of teetering on the brink of history. What would he have done, if Megatron had fallen that far? He couldn’t bear to consider what _ Starscream _would have done in response.

“It’s pretty amazing,” said Deadlock, “the way you brought them together. I bet they can’t even imagine life without each other now.”

“Yes,” said Rung. His spark was still drowning, and he didn’t know why. “Yes. Thank you.”

\---

As the monorail pulled out of the medical district station, Rung let his cheek fall against the glass windows, three datapads in various sized tucked into his folded arms. His subspace was full of so many datasticks that he all but clattered when he walked, last minute budget reports and requisition forms and all sundry other possible documents he might need in order to assemble something approaching a funding plan to present the board with by the start of the next meeting. 

The city flashed by below in burnished copper and dim purple shadows, not at all like the bright yellows and blues of Rodion. He felt out of sorts, especially now that he’d packed up for the day, his scattered thoughts overhung by a dismal sort of melancholy. Every passing observation took on a grey cast. He knew, intellectually, that it was silly to be upset just because someone mentioned that his relationship _ might _fall apart someday. On an infinite timeline, any relationship was bound to end in death or dissolution. 

Rung didn’t feel comforted by that thought.

Everyone knew triads were temporary structures—transitional phases before real paired relationships. In the course of normal events, mechs might need time to parse out their attraction, to realize which (if any) mech was truly conjunx material and which had simply been an entertaining way to pass the time. The discarded mechs might, if they were lucky, be considered for the _ lesser _post of amica. 

It was such a poisonous way of thinking, but it slithered its way into your processor and made its home there, dictating how you saw other mechs. How you saw your own lovers. Rung had refused a few amica offers in his time, when his partners realized they weren’t interested in giving him their spark. He’d tried and failed to explain that being an amica should be a joyous relationship in its own right, not a consolation prize.

One of the only benefits of wartime was that it didn’t operate under the same formal rules. In wartime, there was nothing all that unusual about three mechs making a berthroom alliance. In wartime, certainly, some desperation was to be expected. But peace was settling, a messy chemical reaction approaching stability, and when all the world was ceasing to spin, how then could the center hold?

Rung remembered sitting with Starscream in that Autobot cell after being captured in the battlefield, listening to Starscream talk about his plans for escape. Rung hadn’t wanted to risk it, hadn’t wanted to risk _ succeeding._ The war had become strut-crushingly brutal; Megatron was increasingly distant; Starscream had started to flinch away from touch. Rung hadn’t left the Decepticons when he had the chance, and his reward was to see everything falling apart in front of him. But in that cell, he’d felt at last as if there was hope. He’d felt as if there was a glimmer of light, just outside his grasp, just waiting for someone to—

“You’re still holding out for Megatron to stage a coup,” said a voice in the row behind Rung, a sardonic and unfamiliar, growling voice. Rung resisted the urge to turn; he could just make out the reflection of whoever was being addressed in the window, a slight black-plated frame.

“When Lord Megatron reclaims his rightful place in the government, I will _ obviously _ rally in support,” said the slight frame, sourly. “But the fact of the matter is that Starscream isn’t getting my vote either way. He’s hardly giving good representation of Decepticon interests.”

“You don’t think Megatron’s whispering some of that revolutionary pillow talk in his audial?” the first mech said, sounding vaguely amused. “They _ live _together, y’know.”

“Pfh. You didn’t spend much time on the Nemesis, did you? They’ve been _ sharing pillows _ since well before the war ended, if you follow my meaning. If Starscream didn’t listen to him back then, he’s certainly not going to now that Lord Megatron’s playing at retirement."

“When’re they gonna conjunx, you think?”

“Knowing our beloved senator? Probably at whatever time will inconvenience Prime the most. He might be waiting for Prime to get conjunxed so he can take over the ceremony on the spot.”

“Whose house is it?”

“What house?”

“Where they’re living. Is it Megatron’s house?”

“Oh. Starscream’s, I think.”

The train slowed, grinding to a halt at Rung’s stop on the route. He stood, numbly, and got out of his seat. Neither of the mechs behind him noticed at all. The two of them were splitting an afterwork ration, snapping the hard crystals in half between them, and took no notice of their surroundings. And why should they? What was one half-familiar little mech in the grand scheme of either of their lives?

“Funny old world,” the first mech mused. “You’d asked me when the war started, I’d have told you they’d sooner put a fist through each other’s sparks than get hitched.”

Rung pulled his datapads close against himself and started down the aisle.

“Still,” said the first mech, his voice dwindling behind Rung, “hard to imagine one without the other these days, eh? You think we’ll see Starscream in the audience at Megatron’s new production?”

It was a lovely evening, and Rung made his way through the neighborhood without incident. The road was mostly empty as he left behind the moderate bustle of the station. Cool wind was dispersing the heat of the afternoon; the half rusted remains of decorative sculpture glinted down the line of the boulevard like so many anonymous corpses. His spark was burning in his throat. His steps slowed as he approached the last block before his own home.

Rung stopped, in the middle of a bridge, beneath the shadow of his apartment building. His pede hovered over the edge of that dark line, unable to finish the step. His fuel pump was rattling his chassis, forcing fuel down his lines as if his whole body was preparing to escape an aerial bombardment. The jittery plunge of excess fuel into his extremities had his fingers beginning to shake. The long shadow of his apartment across the pavement seemed to inch closer. After a moment, he drew back and turned to the streetside railing, clutching down on it in a deadmech’s grip.

_ I’m being silly,_ he thought, as his wrists and shoulders began to tremble faintly. _ It won’t be tonight. There’s no reason why it should be tonight. _

Down below the railing there was a deep chasm, ribbons of past geologic eras glinting with silvery seams down into the fathomless dark. The stable fault line had once made this an outrageously fashionable neighborhood. Now Rung had the strangest and most distressing thought that it was going to take him and his building whole in one sharp bite.

He tightened his grip on the railing. He’d always known that this thing with Megatron couldn’t last forever. Rung had never been a true believer, not really, not a Decepticon in the ways that seemed to matter to anyone. He’d always been planning to leave. He’d spent so much time trying to make himself expendable—trying to make sure they could both live without him—trying to build a foundation for the people he loved so that when he was gone they wouldn’t miss him, wouldn’t even stop to think of him—

And now that all that effort had finally paid off, all he wanted was one more hour, one more day, one more week. One more and one more and one more, and it still wouldn’t be enough. Now that the day of his obsolescence was finally approaching, it seemed he wasn’t ready to let go after all.

He forced his vents to cycle cool evening air, offlining his optics so he wouldn’t have to see the silver-ribbed darkness yawning underneath him. Soon his joints would syphon the excess fuel into storage cells, and his limbs would stop shaking.

“It won’t be tonight,” he told himself. “You have a little time yet. Make the most of it, while you can.”

Once Rung could move again, he walked over to the apartment elevator and punched in the code for the top floor. The capsule rose up the side of the building, and Rung watched for the second time today as the street grew smaller and dimmer below him. Normally he enjoyed coming home. Normally it felt like he was stepping into a haven, like it was one of those wistful dreams Megatron had used to have about the cottage on the lake they’d retire to after the war. Or perhaps one of Starscream’s more explicitly erotic and equally unlikely fantasies about the palace harem he’d keep Rung in, one of many treasured jewels and playthings.

Rung’s fingers felt cold. It was just the excess fuel draining, that was all.

The elevator stopped, and Rung tapped in his code for the apartment door. He crept through the entryway—he could hear Megatron in the kitchen, and normally he’d go in to say hello and claim a welcome home kiss, pulling Megatron down with fingers hooked into Megatron’s chest seams. But he didn’t think he could bear it. Not tonight. Tonight he just wanted to sit in the living room and work and reconcile himself to what he could have.

Their couch was comfortable, at least. Rung sat on one side, leaning on the armrest, and looked at the datapads in his hands.

Everyone else could see it. The way Megatron and Starscream fit together—the way Rung had _ made _ them fit together, helping them round their sharp edges and make allowances for the difficult places where the other couldn’t give. And he’d _ known _ it couldn’t last. He’d known he was still the same forgettable mech, despite the gilded image projected by Megatron’s absurd infatuation and Starscream’s desperate grasping for approval. He’d known one day they’d look around and realize they didn’t need him anymore, and still he’d convinced himself that Megatron just didn’t use words like ‘I love you’, and that Starscream wasn’t gradually taking Rung’s place in his own home.

Rung should have turned on one of his datapads by now. He continued to stare at the blank screen, looking back at his own blank expression made by strange by the reflection.

After a while there were footsteps coming from the kitchen, into the hall, and finally into the living room itself. Rung couldn’t quite bring himself to look up when the couch sunk down next to him. But he didn’t have to look up to feel Megatron’s hand brush across his shoulders and the bare place where his wheel-pack had once rested. It had been confiscated by the Autobots when he’d been captured, and Rung had simply never asked for it back. He’d thought he didn’t need it, not during peacetime. Not when he had—whatever it was that he had.

“Are you alright?” asked Megatron, softly. “You look tired.”

“I’m fine,” said Rung, surprising himself with how steady his voice sounded. “I just have a lot of work to do. The Senate approved the hospital’s funding proposal, and I need to present plans at the board meeting tomorrow. If you could just—”

“You’re welcome,” crowed Starscream, right before he fell into the scant space between Megatron and Rung. Rung had to scramble to rescue his datapads from being crushed as Starscream squirmed sideways, until his helm was in Rung’s lap, his knees were threatening to break Megatron’s nose, and his wings were seemingly jabbing into every sensitive seam Rung had.

“When did you get here?” Megatron took his hand off Rung’s shoulder and shoved Starscream’s legs down to prevent his own disfigurement. “I thought there was another of those interminable formal dinners tonight.”

“I left early,” said Starscream. “I wanted to hear what Rung thought about the new budget. Isn’t it good news?”

“Yes.” Rung set his datapads on the side table, resigning himself to participating in this conversation. “But I wish you wouldn’t do me _ favors._ Ratchet wasn’t pleased.”

“I didn’t do it for _ Ratchet."_ Starscream smiled slyly, then pasted on his most charming politician’s grin. “I did it for the good of Cybertron! All those invalids with disgusting diseases should have the best medical care their government can provide.”

“Yes, of course,” said Rung, “but—”

“Anyway, the interspecies diplomacy committee is considering a new set of guidelines for trade negotiations.” Starscream produced a datapad from his subspace. “I _ have _ to read it tonight, but I had some engex at dinner, and now my processor hurts, and I’m _ tired._ Could you…?”

Rung sighed and accepted the datapad. Starscream often wanted to be read to—it would have been cute if only his preferred reading material wasn’t meeting minutes and legal papers. “Your processor wouldn’t hurt if you managed your energy consumption better,” he murmured. “That overpowered distillery keeps blowing your circuit breakers.”

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” said Starscream. “Read.”

Rung looked at Megatron, but Megatron was frowning at Starscream’s thrusters, each of them cupped in one of Megatron’s hands. Rung flicked on the datapad.

“Proposal seven hundred and thirty-three,” he read. “For Senators and aides only. Starscream, should I be looking at this?”

“It’s fine.” Starscream’s optics were dimmed, and he was squirming a little as Megatron ran a finger around the ring of his thruster nozzle. “You can be my aide.”

“Do not disseminate to any citizens barred from participation in politics,” read Rung. “Starscream—”

“Hmm?” Starscream onlined one optic. “Oh, Megatron can go.”

“I’m not going.” Megatron pressed one thick finger _ into _Starscream’s thruster. “I paid for this couch, I’m sitting on this couch.”

Rung had heard that argument many times. His salary paid for the apartment itself, but Megatron had bought the couch, the berth, and the dining room table, and claimed this gave him absolute authority over what happened on them. Rung usually found it amusing. He didn’t have the patience for it tonight.

“Then you’ll have to read this later, Starscream.” He tried to hand the datapad back.

“No-oo.” Starscream moaned as Megatron fit another finger into his thruster nozzle. “I have to read it _ now,_ it’s fine, _ oh—”_

“I promise not to get _ political,"_ said Megatron, slowly pushing his fingers in and out of Starscream’s thruster. “I might make a few comments, but I wouldn’t dream of having an illegal opinion.”

“See, Rung?” Starscream arched, his helm and wings pressing sharply against Rung’s plating as he tried to force Megatron’s fingers deeper. “We can trust Megatron, can’t we? Just, _ frag,_ just read it.”

Rung looked over at his partners, practically acting out the scene he’d imagined with so much fondness this morning, and felt his temper fray and snap.

“If you want Megatron’s comments so badly,” he said quietly, “get _ him _to read it.”

Starscream stiffened, in that specific way he did when he was trying not to let on that his defensive systems had just come to life. “Who put rustwash in _ your _ ration?”

“I just think,” Rung said, carefully throttling his voice down to a low murmur, “if you want Megatron’s involvement, you shouldn’t use me as some kind of smokescreen to get it. I’m not your patsy. I don’t exist to enable your personal agendas.”

There was a kind of hot ache building behind his carefully throttled voice; he had a terrible feeling that if he dared to let drip through, it would burst through his throat and flood his mouth like hot tar. His optics were heating up with the pressure of keeping himself in check.

“Rung,” Megatron said, eyeing him like an unmarked package that had just begun to tick. “What’s going on?”

Rung dug the fingers of both hands into the place where his faceplate met his helm, squeezing the metal, trying to soothe the aching seams. “I’m sorry,” he said, because he _ was _sorry but he was also a lot of other things. “It’s just—it’s been a long day. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Come on,” Starscream scoffed. “Budgets aren’t _ that _ bad. I deal with—”

“It’s not the budget!” Rung said. “To hell with the budget! The budget doesn’t matter!”

Megatron and Starscream exchanged a look, and Rung’s spark crawled into the pit of his tanks. He couldn’t take it, the two of them looking at him like that, like he was some foreign creature in their home—like he was something to be disarmed and disposed of.

“Just leave it,” Rung said, cutting them off before they could start on him. “I’m going to recharge. Let me up.”

Starscream shook Megatron’s hands off his thruster and turned on his side, facing away from Rung. He was still pinning Rung’s legs, his wings smacked painfully against Rung’s chest, and it looked like he’d sunk his talons into the edge of the couch cushion. Rung couldn’t smother the angry noise that burst out of his voicebox.

“Now hold on a moment,” Megatron said, frowning.

“No!” Rung snapped. “I’m having a bad day and I don’t want to take it out on either of you, but you’re pushing me.”

_"Rung,"_ Megatron said again, this time outright reproving. 

“Let me up!” Rung said, palm slamming down on the arm of the couch. “I can’t just watch you falling in love and leaving me behind anymore! Isn’t it bad enough I’ll have to be graceful about it when you cut me loose, are you really going to force me to watch it happening?”

“What?” said Megatron.

Rung tried to cut himself off before he could make it worse, but the taste of tar was already in his mouth, an unstoppable torrent. “I’m sick of bracing myself for the inevitable loss,” he said, “I’ve been forcing myself to pretend along with you when you talk about—about lake houses and gardens and—knowing that one day you’re going to move on and I’ll still be here, just like you left me!”

His optics were burning, he could feel them on the edge of bleeding light. His fingers clenched down on the couch. 

“I just want to be important to you!” he said. “This is everything I’ve ever wanted and I can’t _ keep _ it! We have peace! Everybody else gets what they want, and meanwhile I have to watch you drifting away from me every day, after all the work I did to hold us together through that _ endless _bloody war! I want to be important to you! Why can’t I be as important to you as Starscream! I love you as much as he does, I should matter too!”

Megatron was staring at him, visibly stupefied. Rung’s optics were boiling now, but all at once his throat went cold and dry. Starscream didn’t say a word, but his weight in Rung’s lap might as well have been cement in his lines.

Rung clutched his mouth with his hand, curling sideways over the armrest. “Primus, that’s awful of me, isn’t it?” he whispered. “How can I ask that of you?” He cycled cool air frantically through his vents, his aging component rattling with the effort. _ “Who am I to ask that of you?” _

“Rung,” said Megatron, “of course you can—”

Rung didn’t think he could handle whatever gentle letdown lurked at the end of that sentence. “I’m sorry,” he said, hoarsely. “I know I shouldn’t be selfish. I love that you’re happy together. I want that for you. I just—I just wanted to be part of it too. I know we can’t really live like you used to talk about, but I hoped… I had hoped it could be _ like _ that.” 

“If you’re finished congratulating Starscream and I on our non-existent love affair,” said Megatron, evenly, “maybe you can listen to me when I say you are the most important person I’ve ever met.”

_ Oh,_ thought Rung, misery crawling through his lines, _ he thinks he can fix this. _Rung didn’t see how. The illusion had shattered, and he could see through Megatron’s exaggerated praise. It only made him feel like a doll, painted up and played with until his owners grew tired of the game.

“Stop that,” demanded Megatron.

“I’m listening,” said Rung.

“You’re doubting me,” said Megatron. “I can see it in your face. What can I do to prove myself to you? We’re conjunxed in everything but name—I didn’t think a mature mech like you needed a ceremony to prove my devotion.”

That broke through—a laugh forced its way out of Rung’s voicebox._ "Conjunxed?_ I’m—We’re not—”

“We’ve performed every act,” insisted Megatron. “We’ve been intimate for hundreds of years. I’ve held you while you recharged, and you’ve felt my valve clutch around your fingers.”

Rung had to take off his glasses. He wanted to curl his fingers around the rim of one optic and squeeze, but he rubbed the side of his nose instead. “I don’t want to devalue our sexual relationship,” he said, “but if I’d conjunxed every mech I’d ever slept with, I’d—”

“Do you remember when you told me about the council and what they did to you?” asked Megatron. “About Froid? You looked so resigned when you spoke about being erased, and all I had to offer as a disclosure in return were my trite stories about coming online, already at work.”

Rung did remember. He remembered how his voicebox had choked and frozen, and Megatron had slung an arm around his waist and pulled him in close. He’d thought that Megatron didn’t recognize just how much it had hurt to talk about Froid’s betrayal, and he’d honestly been glad when Megatron had changed the subject to his early life in the mines. Rung had shuddered as he made gentle noises of sympathy, his plating clattering against Megatron’s frame, and let the oblivious warmth of Megatron’s engine sink underneath his armor.

“That was just a conversation,” said Rung, hating that he couldn’t just stop and accept the consolation Megatron was trying to offer him. “Are all of your acts like that? Are you going to tell me the fuel you gave me this morning was your act of profference?”

“Of course not,” said Megatron. “I gave you a home when you needed a refuge, when the Functionists were killing you by inches. And now,” he waved his hand, taking in the room, “you’ve given me one in return.”

Rung looked down at Starscream, hoping that someone would share his incredulity, but all he could see was the back of Starscream’s helm. For once, Starscream didn’t seem interested in making snide comments.

“I’m not saying we haven’t been in a _ relationship,"_ said Rung, “but conjunxing can’t just be the day-to-day acts of living together. It’s special. It’s pouring your spark into another person, and I _ can’t _be that for you, I know I can’t, so why don’t you just let me—”

“Rung,” said Megatron, “I ended the _ war _for you.”

Rung’s central engine stopped, just for a moment. Long enough to make him cough, smacking his own chest with a closed fist to try and restart it. When it did, the sudden burst of energy made him feel perversely weak.

“No,” he gasped out. “No, no, no. You did that for _ Cybertron._ You can’t have done it for me.”

“You came to me,” said Megatron. “In the Autobot cells. Talking about peace with a Prime, in spite of what had been done to us all in Primus’ name. In spite of the mechs we had lost, and the dignity we had never been allowed to have. If anyone else had talked to me of peace—if _ Starscream _had even mentioned the idea—I would have laughed in their face. But I knew you’d spent so long yearning for it. I’d seen that hope grow sour with time, and I could so easily see a future where our love soured to match.” Megatron dropped his gaze, looking at his own hands. “I imagined what I would do to keep you, if you truly tried to leave me,” he murmured. “I didn’t want to be that mech.”

Rung trembled.

He had worked so hard for peace, and felt so guilty for manipulating Megatron into a position where he might even consider it. Starscream had given the Autobots dribbles of information—enough to weaken the Decepticon position while still showing the Autobots just how strong and determined the Decepticon forces really were. The Autobots had Deadlock newly-captured in their cells, to demonstrate the depths of rage and fanaticism the Decepticon ideal could still inspire. They had Ratchet in their medbay, telling his personal friend Optimus Prime just how reasonable _ some _ mechs in the Decepticon hierarchy could be. And then Jazz had let Rung into Megatron’s cell, and Rung had smiled and dimmed his optics and asked if Megatron could negotiate with the enemy. And Megatron had given in to Rung as his _ act of devotion._

Rung only realized he was leaking washer fluid when Megatron brushed a track of it away from Rung’s optic. “I’m sorry,” he said, vents hitching, his voice strangled with static. “It’s been such a long day, I don’t mean to—”

“That’s alright.” Megatron’s hand was so gentle against Rung’s cheek. “You have to let the emotions out. Otherwise they fester into resentment and assassination attempts.”

Rung made a horrible noise that he only himself half-recognized as a laugh.

“I love you,” said Megatron.

Rung tried to control his expression, but apparently Megatron could read him like a datapad, because his face hardened into a frown.

“What do I have to do to stop you from doubting me?” asked Megatron. “Do you need the ceremony, our names linked together in the Hall of Records? Do you need the government to know what we mean to each other?”

“You make it sound ridiculous,” mumbled Rung. “I don’t _ need _anything. And I never gave you an act of devotion.”

“Please,” said Megatron. “You gave it to me every day that you stayed.”

Rung’s engine cut out again.

“I’ll comm the Hall of Records tomorrow,” said Megatron. “I’ll fill out the forms, pay whatever absurd fee they’re demanding. Will you be my conjunx, Rung?”

Rung couldn’t move. Couldn’t vent. Couldn’t _ dare. _

“Rung?” said Megatron.

Starscream rolled onto his back, smashing his wings against Rung’s chassis yet again, and peered up into Rung’s face. “He’s locked up,” he advised. “Try shaking him and see if he resets.”


	2. The Wave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something is rotten in the state of Tetrahex, and Ratchet intends to get to the bottom of it.

In the few minutes before the meeting actually commenced, there was usually some small talk, some catch up, a little bit of office politics. Ratchet was too old for that slag so he just sat there and tried to catch a micro nap while Tinker narrated every single bar crawl he’d been on since the last board meeting. Ratchet was tired just thinking about half of it. Did the mech never  _ rest?  _ Sure, Ratchet got up to some antics of his own while he was in med school, but that was over a million years ago and he’d been exhausted ever since.

Ratchet already had his optics powered down and his hands settled up on his chassis when the door to the meeting room flew open, slamming into the wall so hard that Ratchet was already on his feet with a wrench in his hand before he registered who was standing in the doorway.

“Hello!” chirped Rung, beaming wide enough to crack his faceplate. “I have amazing news!”

“The new Senate funding is very exciting,” said Optimus, from a few seats down—he’d been napping too, from the hoarseness of his voice. “But I don’t think it merits this level of—”

“I’m getting conjunxed!” Rung bounded forward and dropped a stack of datapads onto the conference table. “At the end of this week! And I’m taking five days off to celebrate our official union! But don’t worry, I’ve created a new budget and contacted a few construction companies for quotes, and it should all tick along nicely while I’m otherwise occupied. I just wanted to—”

Rung’s normal seat was right next to Ratchet’s so it was easy for Ratchet to reach over and catch Rung’s shoulder. The mech was  _ vibrating. _ “Slow down,” said Ratchet. “Who are you getting conjunxed to?”

“Megatron,” said Rung, his voice husky and astonished. Like he was living in a daydream, not quite sure that he wouldn’t wake up. “At the end of this week.”

“Yeah, you, uh. You said.” Ratchet looked helplessly at the rest of the board. It was a carefully mixed group of Decepticons and Autobots; medics, government officials, business leaders, and public representatives. The Autobots all seemed united in their shock—Optimus would have been slack-jawed, if he ever took off that ridiculous battlemask. The Decepticons had more varied reactions, but Flatline was leaning across the table to offer his congratulations, and even as he spoke Swindle was pulling up a catalogue of reception accessories on the meeting’s overhead screen.

“Thank you, yes, I’m  _ so  _ happy.” Rung took Flatline’s hand in both of his own. Handshake still pumping frantically, he added: “I’m sorry, Swindle, you’ll have to talk to Starscream, he insisted on handling all of the reception details. He wants me to focus on being in love! Can you believe that?”

“No,” said Ratchet. 

“I’m so fortunate,” Rung said, accepting another handshake from one of the medics across the table. “I never thought I would be anyone’s  _ conjunx. _ I can’t believe how fortunate I am, to be loved by someone so generous and caring and—” Rung’s antennae actually  _ fluttered, _ “—so  _ tender..." _

Optimus and Ratchet exchanged a dire look. “Rung,” Optimus said, “who exactly do  _ you _ think you’re getting conjunxed to?”

“I just said,” Rung replied, only half paying attention, “it’s Megatron, of course.”

Optimus’ expression was the same pained look Ratchet had once seen him make over the specs of a blown artillery depot. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same mech?” 

Ratchet stood up. “Listen, can we talk about this for a minute?”

“Oh, I don’t want to derail the meeting with my personal life.” Rung covered his mouth as he laughed. “Any more than I already have! If you’ll all turn on your datapads, I’ve sent you an upload with—”

“Just for a minute,” insisted Ratchet. “Here, we can step outside. We’ll be right back. Don’t worry about your datapads, leave them right there.”

Rung made a few more bleats of protest, but he soon recognized that Ratchet was able and willing to carry him out bodily if need be. Ratchet herded Rung out the door and far enough down the hallway that they wouldn’t be overheard by the board. Then he turned Rung around, so he could check the back of Rung’s neck for mnemosurgery scars.

“What are you doing?” asked Rung.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Ratchet, and turned Rung the right way around again. “Hey, you know you can tell me anything, right?”

Rung nodded. “Yes! Do you want to hear about Megatron’s proposal? I thought my audials were malfunctioning at first, or he was joking, or—”

“Are they listening to you right now?” asked Ratchet. “You don’t have to say it out loud. Just blink once for yes, twice for no.”

Rung obediently blinked twice. “Who would be listening?”

“Megatron and Starscream,” hissed Ratchet. “I don’t know what kind of scheme they’re trying to pull, but I don’t like it.”

“Oh, it’s not a  _ scheme." _ Rung caught one of Ratchet’s hands and squeezed. “I don’t blame you for doubting it, I can hardly believe it’s real either. I’m so  _ lucky. _ And, you know, this only happened because of you.”

“Me?” Ratchet tried to peer through Rung’s glasses. Maybe he was on something. Were his optics pulsing? Was his temperature elevated?

“I thought—well, if we’re being honest, I thought you were being a little cruel, yesterday,” said Rung. “But I see now that you were just being perceptive. I was so  _ unhappy, _ thinking that I was nothing but a set of training wheels, to be discarded when Megatron and Starscream were finally ready to travel on their own. I was just burying all of that resentment and anxiety, until you put a name to it. And then, when I went home, and Megatron told me how he really felt—” Rung sighed, his smile smaller but no less ecstatic. “You’re a good friend, Ratchet.”

“I am?” Maybe Rung was glitching. Maybe  _ Ratchet _ was glitching. No one facing the prospect of being conjunxed to a notorious war-mongerer should sound so joyful.

“Of course you are.” Rung squeezed Ratchet’s hand again, and then used it to drag Ratchet back toward the conference room. “Now, come on. Work doesn’t stop just because I’m having the best day of my life.” Rung hesitated, and then laughed. “I mean, so far. I can’t wait until I’m actually conjunxed.”

\---

By mutual unspoken agreement, Optimus and Ratchet were the last to leave the boardroom. As the door closed behind the last of their cohort, Ratchet whirled on him.

“What in the name Primus’ nonexistent codpiece is going on here?” he said, slapping his palms down against the tabletop. 

Optimus, still in his seat, gestured helplessly. Rung’s budget proposals were still open on the datapad in front of him, each item detailed with manic enthusiasm. 

“Do you think he’s even slept since the proposal?” Ratchet said, poking the datapad warily. 

“Well,” said Optimus slowly, “I think a few rounds of celebration with Megatron of all mechs would knock  _ anyone _ out. Especially someone that small…”

Ratchet shot him a disgusted look. “Please, Optimus, I like my fuel  _ inside _ my tanks.”

“You have to admit, Megatron has a certain… draw to him,” Optimus said, his optics fixed unseeingly on the table. “I remember once we had each other quite literally by the spark on top of Sherma’s Bridge, and he said to me—”

Optimus looked up, noticed Ratchet’s expression, and ducked his head.

“He  _ can  _ be charming,” Optimus finished, sidestepping the unfortunate implications a bit too late.

“I’m not buying it,” Ratchet said, jabbing a finger in Optimus’ direction. “I’m not buying Megatron going domestic, and I’m  _ not _ buying Starscream letting anyone swoop Megatron right out from under his nose.  _ Focus on being in love _ my tin plated aft. There’s a long game here, and I’m not about to sit by and watch my friend get bulldozed in the process.”

“Ratchet…”

“I’m getting to the bottom of this,” Ratchet said, narrowing his optics. “Don’t try and talk me out of it.”

Optimus set his chin in his hand, leaning over the table. “How many surgeries do you have scheduled today?”

Ratchet paused, and then worked his jaw. “Six,” he admitted. 

Optimus just looked at him.

“Fine,” Ratchet said, “fine, I’ll delegate a couple of them. First Aid can handle a couple of aortic valve replacements anyway, he’s sat in on enough of them. But I’m  _ not _ giving him the cranial fissure, that one needs me in person.”

Optimus continued looking at him.

“Grrrah!” Ratchet threw up his hands. “Okay, Pharma can take it! But only because the alternative is letting Rung have his goddamn spark broken in front of me.”

“Not an injury as easily repaired,” Optimus agreed, reaching for his own datapad. “What  _ I _ don’t understand is why Starscream is letting Rung conjunx anyone at all,” he added, after a moment. “I swear he’s hellbent on debauching the poor mech in every way short of fragging him on the Senate floor. Every time I see him he’s got some horrible new escapade to regale me with. I don’t think he even needs half the maps he comes to get from the archives.”

“Ugh,” Ratchet said. “Rung never says anything about his  _ relationships. _ Are you sure Starscream’s not just making it up to spite you?”

“There’s certain details you can’t make up,” Optimus said, darkly. “Starscream likes to describe  _ textures." _

Ratchet’s processor automatically began generating hypothetically obscene scenarios which Starscream could have described in slippery detail. It was awful. Ratchet manually rebooted his imagination circuits before they could move on to speculating on Rung’s array detailing.

“No,” he said, firmly. “Rung’s too—too  _ reasonable _ to let Starscream try his wiles on him.”

“Did you know Rung wrote a book about the psychology of sex?” Optimus said, in equal parts fascination and horror. “Starscream has a copy in his office, the first thing you see when you walk in.”

“There’s nothing shocking about academic research on interfacing,” said Ratchet.

“Starscream read me a paragraph,” said Optimus. “It was… illuminating. Rung has a very straightforward attitude toward sex. I don’t think Starscream even had to wile, he probably just asked if Rung wanted to frag and Rung proposed three different positions that would be the most beneficial for creating trust within a new relationship.”

Ratchet’s processor tried generating the three positions. Face to face, that was obvious. Back to front, if you wanted to push your trust boundaries a little. Maybe one of those tricky sideways positions that most mechs didn’t have the right hip articulation to get anything except a shallow—

Ratchet shut down his imagination circuits entirely.

“I’m gonna talk to Deadlock,” he said. “He’ll know what’s going on.”

\---

Deadlock was one of those Decepticons everyone had expected to be in prison for the rest of his life. Everyone was  _ eligible _ for parole, that was part of the treaty, but mechs like Overlord and Shockwave were never going to convince a panel that they were fit to be unleashed on a recovering society. Ratchet had heard about Deadlock’s first parole hearing from Bumblebee, who’d been serving as a citizen representative at the time. Apparently Ultra Magnus had asked whether Deadlock had any skills he could use in a work-release position, and Deadlock had looked across the three-mech panel and all their attendant bureaucracy and just said “killing Autobot scum.”

It was a shame, really. Ratchet remembered Deadlock before the war—remembered him pretty well, actually. Optimus had brought him in to Ratchet’s clinic. Different name, different paintjob, same wary optics. He’d been a nice kid, more or less. Ratchet had been too busy to really do anything, just patched him back together and sent him on his way. He’d thought a lot about missed opportunities like that one during the long years of the war. If Ratchet had just taken a moment to help Drift, just stopped being a medic for one fragging second and actually tried to  _ help, _ maybe he could’ve prevented Megatron from twisting Deadlock into another violent ideologue. Too late now.

But a few months later, Rung had taken the afternoon off, and when he came back to work he had Deadlock in tow. Just work-release, to start, but Deadlock didn’t pick any fights and he worked diligently as Rung’s administrative assistant, and pretty soon he was on real parole. Ratchet had signed off on the work requirements, since he was the highest-ranking Autobot in the building. He hadn’t even hesitated—it was obvious that Deadlock was devoted to Rung.

No big surprise, then, that Deadlock was sitting at his desk outside Rung’s office, looking about as shellshocked as if a left-over bomb had gone off in his face.

“Hey, Ra—Sir.” Deadlock briefly met Ratchet’s optics before glancing away. “Rung’s not in, sorry. He’s out talking to the Constructicons about the new wing.”

“Oh, good,” said Ratchet. Now all of Cybertron would hear the  _ amazing news. _ “I actually came to see you.”

“Me?” Deadlock did that weird thing he always did where he looked Ratchet in the face for just a second, then looked at Ratchet’s chest, then jerked his optics away and stared at a point about a foot above Ratchet’s head. Probably just nervous—the kid was still wearing a tracking anklet after all.

“You know Rung,” said Ratchet. “And you know he has some kind of… thing with Starscream and Megatron, right?”

“Right,” said Deadlock.

“And Rung talks to you?” Ratchet went on before Deadlock could do anything but nod. “Yeah, I figured. I mean, you’re his assistant, you probably schedule his anniversaries for him and everything.”

“Sometimes,” said Deadlock, about as careful as if he’d watched Ratchet string up ten feet of tripwires. “He likes to celebrate the important milestones.”

“This is a pretty big milestone, huh?” said Ratchet, coaxingly. “Why do you think he’s conjunxing  _ Megatron?" _

For all of Ratchet’s attempts to ease them into the conversation, Deadlock’s expression still froze and his gaze sharpened into a glare that would be halfway effective if it wasn’t directed at the wall. “What are you trying to say? You don’t think Megatron deserves to be happy?”

_ Nah, _ thought Ratchet,  _ he doesn’t. _ But he wasn’t here to singlehandedly restart the war. He tried changing the emphasis. “Why is  _ Rung  _ conjunxing Megatron? I mean, he’s so—they’re so—”

“Oh, come on,” snapped Deadlock. “You don’t think he can handle it? You know Rung. He’s clever, he’s kind, he’s determined—pit, he kept the medical division running for centuries, even when the Wreckers had a bounty on his head.”

Ratchet winced. He still wasn’t sure if it was worse that the Wreckers had been gunning for a medic or that their intel had apparently had them looking for a ‘Rum.’ 

“Rung deserves the best conjunx on Cybertron,” said Deadlock. “I guess he decided that’s Megatron.”

Something about the way Deadlock said it struck Ratchet like a metal pipe over the helm. “And not you, huh?”

Deadlock snarled and looked away, an odd combination of hostility and defensiveness. “There was never any chance of that, even if—even if Rung wasn’t already involved. I didn’t conjunx when the war started, I’m not conjunxing now.”

Ratchet wrinkled his nose. “When the war started? The only people who conjunxed before the war were rich gearsticks and senators who wanted everyone to see them putting a collar on their lovers.”

There had been a certain type of mech who was like hot bleeding bait for the turbofoxes, too. Before and even after he was together with Ratchet, Pharma was always being courted for subordinate conjunx by some idiot or another, political types looking for someone beautiful and accomplished but not  _ too _ accomplished to wear on their arm. Enough to glitter, not enough to threaten. 

Ratchet shook off the memory. “It was all just an excuse to show who owned who,” he said.

“Typical functionist propaganda.” Deadlock relaxed a little, back on familiar ranting territory. “You ruling classes twisted an equal and mutual partnership and made it about  _ hierarchy. _ Forced new conjunxes to register at the Hall of Records, and investigated anyone conjunxing below or above their own status. Poisoning everyone else’s relationships, just like you poisoned your own.”

“I wasn’t part of any ruling class,” said Ratchet.

“Weren’t you?” Deadlock sneered, but didn’t argue. “A lot of people conjunxed, once the Decepticons had risen up and freed us from the unjust laws meant to keep us down. There were mass receptions on the Nemesis, once every quarter.”

That really didn’t fit with Ratchet’s image of the Decepticon flagship. “What did Megatron think of that?”

Deadlock hesitated. “He… thought they were a distraction, mostly. But he always drank the toasts along with the rest of us. Sometimes he’d dance with Rung, if we’d had a victory recently. Or fight with Starscream, if we’d had a loss.”

Ratchet snorted. “That sounds about right. Megatron’s too high and mighty for conjunxing. I remember how the old Primes were, with those harems. I bet he’d like to see Rung and Starscream down there in the old conjugal estates, I just  _ bet.” _

The old Senate had been a bunch of status-obsessed egotists, but at least they’d actually conjunxed the mechs whose lives they were commodifying. Yeah, everyone knew who was primary and who was subordinate, but at least there was an  _ expectation _ of fidelity. The primaries still had to give  _ something _ of themselves in return.

The old Primes never conjunxed. Too busy being the emissary of God, or whatever; too busy with their servants and lackeys and their catalogue of carefully selected consorts, too self important, because who would dare imagine they could be part of an equal relationship with a master so  _ high _ above them? Even before all the corruption had bubbled up to the surface, the whole institution had left a sour scum in Ratchet’s mouth.

“Do you even listen to yourself?” Deadlock demanded. “First conjunxing is only for rich senators, now it’s not good enough for Megatron. What exactly do you want Megatron to do?”

“I want what’s best for Rung,” said Ratchet. “I don’t want him hurt, and I don’t want Megatron thinking that he can win Rung’s love and devotion just by—by signing a form and having a party!”

“Oh, frag off,” snapped Deadlock. “Can’t you see that they’re destined for each other?”

There was silence for a minute. Ratchet wasn’t sure what he needed to say—he wasn’t even sure what he wanted to hear. He certainly wasn’t going to get Megatron’s biggest fan to admit that maybe, possibly, the leader of Cybertron’s bloodiest failed revolution wasn’t ideal conjunx material. Deadlock probably didn’t even think the revolution had failed.

“Did you know Starscream got me captured?” asked Deadlock.

Ratchet hadn’t  _ known, _ but he’d seen Jazz come out of Starscream’s cell with a face full of glee, and then the next week they had a snarling Decepticon subcommander in the prison ship. It hadn’t taken a Perceptor to put two and two together.

“If that had been anyone else, they’d be dead,” said Deadlock flatly. “I don’t care if I’d end up rusting in stasis cuffs for the rest of my life. There’s consequences for traitors. But Rung told me it was necessary. He told me that the war needed to end, and that Starscream needed to give me up, and that Megatron needed to come to terms with peace. And he didn’t need to tell me  _ why  _ all of that happened, because he’s Rung and I trust him. So when he asked me if I could try living on a free Cybertron without tearing Starscream’s wings out of his sockets, I said yes. Do you understand what kind of sacrifice that was?”

Ratchet didn’t, not really, but Deadlock looked like he was yearning for someone to disembowel so Ratchet went ahead and nodded.

“You know, I’ve always remembered you,” said Deadlock. “You tried to help me. It was nice. But Megatron  _ saved  _ me. And so did Rung, once things started to get… bad. These are the two most important, most  _ genuine _ mechs Cybertron has ever produced. I’d do anything for them. It’s only right that they be together. I’m going to stand up at the reception and I’m going to tell everyone that. It’ll be my honor. And if you have a problem with their union, you better tell me right now.”

“Uh,” said Ratchet, now deeply regretting this whole conversation, “yeah, no. No problem. Sounds great.” 

Deadlock slumped back in his chair. “Good,” he said, all of a sudden deflated. “Then I’ll see you at the party.”

\---

Deadlock was clearly still drinking the Decepticon coolant. Ratchet figured he needed to get closer to Rung, talk to someone who could see exactly how messed-up this sudden announcement was.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t get any closer than the foyer.

"Look,” said Ratchet, already losing his temper, “I'm a voting citizen. Starscream is  _ my  _ senator too, and I want to see him."

The thick-set racer sitting at the receptionist’s desk gave Ratchet a bored look. "He's not available."

"If I have to break the door down," began Ratchet, but then Starscream's office door opened on its own.

"Keep it down out there," shrilled Starscream. "I'm on hold, and I don't—oh,  _ hello." _ Ratchet watched with astonishment as Starscream's voice smoothed into a sickly-sweet coo, his gaze fixing on the middle distance. 

"Yes, yes, this is  _ Senator  _ Starscream. Yes, you  _ should  _ be honored. Mhm. Well, my  _ best friends _ are getting hitched this weekend. Oh,  _ thank you. _ Yes, I’m very happy for them. Of course I knew the reception would have to be at," Starscream hesitated for a long moment, "pace gardens. Peace gardens? Yeah, sure."

Starscream turned back into his office and Ratchet rushed after him, sliding in just before the door locked shut on the receptionist’s enraged face.

The office was, if Ratchet was putting it kindly, a disaster. Tinsel swatches were hanging from every piece of furniture, a series of half-drunk energon cubes of various exotic colors were haphazardly scattered on a shelf, and the floor was strewn with datapads, as if they’d been shoved off Starscream’s desk to accommodate the massive color-coded seating chart that was laid out there. The only datapad that had escaped the violence was slim, gilded, and carefully displayed on a stand, left powered-on so you could read the title.  _ Learning Your Frame: A Therapist’s Guide to Sexual Pleasure. _ It was signed in black marker across the bottom of the screen. Ratchet just barely resisted the urge to pick it up.

“Is the deposit negotiable?” asked Starscream as he slid into his desk chair. “I mean, I’m  _ good  _ for it, no need to worry, but this is very short notice, and—No, I see. I completely understand.” He bit his lip, staring down at the seating chart. “How many can you fit, again? Yes, in the ballroom. We’re not going to sit  _ outside, _ there’s weather out there.”

One of the datapads near Ratchet’s foot was still backlit. He picked that one up, mostly to distract himself from Rung’s sex guide. It showed a detailed rendering of Rung, only this Rung had inlaid gold highlights, a drapery of sheer orange plastic, and sapphires set in his helm and around his spark window. He wasn’t wearing his glasses—instead they dangled from a thin gold chain around his neck.

Ratchet had been to a few conjunxing receptions. They’d been both boring and oddly melancholy. Decimus’ reception had been particularly bad—Ratchet hadn’t had the option of refusing his invitation, so instead he’d sat at his table with Pharma and taken advantage of the free drinks. It had been entertaining, listening to Pharma gossip about all of the faults of Tower society, watching Pharma sneer at Decimus’ increasingly drunken antics with his Senate buddies. But Ratchet’s optics kept drifting over to the new conjunx, Ratchet couldn’t remember his name, sitting silent and alone at the high table. 

The poor thing looked more like a centerpiece than a person, all glitter and artful, precarious toga folds. You could barely have told who was under the heavy gold decorations, more wrappings and linkings and pendants than you could shake a fist at. Ratchet remembered grimly hoping that none of the carousers accidentally pulled the fire alarm, because that bot couldn’t have been capable of taking more than a step without getting tangled in his own finery. It had seemed, that night, like the loneliness of a glittering star.

Ratchet looked again at the rendering in his hands. It certainly made Rung  _ (Rung) _ look gorgeous, but there was also a warmth to the design that Ratchet hadn’t expected. None of the trophy conjunxes had ever looked  _ cherished. _

“It’s a deal,” said Starscream. “I’ll transmit the credits right away.  _ Such  _ a pleasure. Bye-bye!” He looked up at Ratchet. “What the pit are you doing in my office?”

“Waiting for you to tell me this is all a prank,” said Ratchet. “Megatron and Rung are your best friends? Seriously?”

“Don’t be jealous.” Starscream leaned back in his chair and smirked. “I’m sure Rung considers you  _ a  _ friend. I’m even seating you at the ‘Rung’s friends’ table, look!” He jabbed a talon at a table on the seating chart surrounded by orange markers, one of which, Ratchet realized, had a crude chevron drawn on it. And a scowl.

“You’ll have fun,” said Starscream. “It’ll be you, Optimus—”

“Optimus is invited?”

“Everyone’s invited.” Starscream waved a hand at the admittedly overflowing seating chart. “Everyone  _ important. _ And I like Optimus, he’s very entertaining when teased. Anyway, that table will be you, Optimus, Aglet, and Deadlock.” Starscream made a face. “I’m expecting you to keep an optic on him, by the way, I’m not interested in witnessing whatever scene Rung’s pet assassin is planning to make.”

“Deadlock’s happy for Rung.” Ratchet put the datapad with Rung’s picture on Starscream’s desk and leaned forward. “Because for some bizarre reason he thinks this conjunxing thing really going to happen. That it’s not just some scheme that you and Megatron cooked up to break Rung’s spark.”

“Believe me, if I had a say  _ no one _ would be getting conjunxed.” Starscream glared at Ratchet. “But apparently I don’t, so the reception is going to be perfect, and everyone’s going to be there, and everyone’s going to have an amazing time. Especially Rung.”

“What’s got you so upset?” growled Ratchet. “Were you hoping you’d get Megatron to yourself someday?”

“Megatron?” Starscream laughed. “Who cares about  _ Megatron? _ Oh, let me guess. You were one of the busybodies pouring poison into Rung’s audial.” Starscream stood up abruptly, sending his chair slamming back into the wall, using every inch of his height to loom over Ratchet. 

“I was enjoying myself,” said Starscream, darkly. “I had Rung eating out of the pit of my valve.”

Ratchet choked. “You mean the palm of your hand.”

“I know what I said!” snapped Starscream. “He would read to me! And massage my neck cables! And then you come along talking about  _ commitment _ and  _ relationships _ and  _ Megatron _ and suddenly reading to me isn’t  _ good enough _ anymore, Rung wants to be conjunxed! I don’t want to be conjunxed! Didn’t anyone think of asking me what I want?”

Ratchet realized he’d backed up a step without even noticing, and forced himself to hold his ground. “You’re  _ not  _ being conjunxed.” 

“Right. Yes.” Starscream looked down at the seating chart. A few of the markers had scattered, and as Ratchet watched Starscream slid them back into place. “I’m the friend, that’s all.”

Ratchet felt like he knew Rung. He’d worked with the mech through the peace process, they’d built a hospital together, he met with Rung every single day. Rung was a good mech, the kind of good that most medics had gotten burned out of them during the war. The kind of good that cared about subordinates, colleagues, and random mechs on the street, not just whatever patient had landed on their slab. Ratchet appreciated Rung, deeply and abidingly. He thought they were lucky that so much of Rung had survived the war, when everyone else was missing big chunks of their personality and their mental health.

It was still weird to slip into this parallel universe where Rung inspired this level of passion. And ate valve, apparently.

“Barricade!” called Starscream, without looking up from his desk.

The door slid open immediately to reveal that stocky racer from earlier. He must have been waiting right outside.

“Ratchet’s leaving,” said Starscream. “Through the window, if necessary. And cancel the rest of my appointments today, I need to find an artist to do Rung’s highlights.”

“Gotcha.” Barricade caught Ratchet’s wrist. “Come on buddy, let’s—”

Ratchet shook him off. “I’m going, don’t worry.” He did press his luck, though, evading Barricade’s grubby hands long enough to lean in and give his most meaningful glare. “This better not be a game, Starscream. Rung deserves better.”

Starscream held Ratchet’s gaze for a long moment, and then all at once he smiled, regaining a veneer of confidence. “Then it’s my job to make sure he gets the best, isn’t it?” He flicked his wrist in a disinterested goodbye, picking up the rendering of Rung’s evening paint. “I’ll see you this weekend, Ratchet.”

\---

Rung: delusional with joy. Useless. Deadlock: hard-coded for loyalty. Useless. Starscream: having some kind of reception planner breakdown. Useless  _ and  _ liable to go for Ratchet’s neck cables if subjected to further stress.

There was only one place left to go, if Ratchet was going to have any chance of stopping this farce before it careened off the looming cliff.

The theater was in an old apartment building, with a steel sign over the open door that read  _ Broken Cogs _ . The windows were small and narrow, and no one stopped to greet Ratchet as he stomped his way inside. It was bigger than he’d expected—the building had been gutted to reveal high ceilings where once there had been densely-packed studios. 

The stage was a stark concrete block, unpainted and harshly lit. The audience’s seats were made of uncomfortable steel, all right angles. Ratchet had been to an opera, once or twice. Pharma had wanted to go—all the ‘right people’ went. It had been loud, both the music and the chatter during intermission, and Ratchet had chased off a few upper-class mechs who thought hitting on Pharma was their right as rich, empty-helmed gearsticks. But at least the seats had been plush and the drinks had been strong. This place looked like a bring your own flask kind of theater. More Ratchet’s speed, actually, if you could forget who was running it.

The set was a series of burnished cubes in varying sizes, bustling with stage hands and actors running through their parts here and there among the menagerie. There, on the far end, was Megatron, issuing directions to a perplexed looking Sixshot. Ratchet marched up the steps and onto the stage, pushing between a couple of actors exchanging rapidfire dialogue and shoving aside someone who tried to nervously blockade his path. Megtron looked up from the script he was annotating just as the nervous mech went helm first into the orchestra pit with a crash. 

“Doctor,” Megatron said, narrowing his smelter-red optics in something that could either be threat or amusement. 

“You,” Ratchet said, the tingle of wartime instincts rippling the plating down his back. “What game do you think you’re playing at?”

“Currently,” Megatron adjusted the tiny reading glasses on his nose to make a grand fragging show of checking the script, “I’d say we’re doing a rehearsal. I hope you aren’t looking for a part. It’s a bit late in production to be swapping in new players.”

“Cut the scrap,” Ratchet snapped. “If you’re half the tactician everyone thinks you were, you already know who I’m here about. Do you wanna do this backstage or do you want every one of your prancing idiots to hear me call you a slagger to your face?”

“I believe you’ve done that already,” Megatron said, in a deceptively mild tone. He took the specs from his nose and folded them up neatly into his subspace. 

Ratchet bristled. There was a klik of uneasy quiet as the chatter in the wings died down. Ratchet could feel optics on his back.

“Chairs required for the table,” called Soundwave.

Rumble and Frenzy dashed by, carrying a pair of bronze cubes that looked like all of the other bronze cubes already set on the stage. But they were slightly smaller than the bronze cube Rumble and Frenzy set them next to, so apparently that qualified them as chairs.

Megatron relaxed, which was the first moment that Ratchet realized he had been tensed at all. He could have struck at any time, and truth be told, Ratchet would never have seen it coming.

“Go ahead and run it with the new blocking, Sixshot,” Megatron said, tossing the script back into his actor’s hands. “Ratchet, why don’t you step down into the house with me.”

Very reasonable risk calculations told Ratchet that this was a Bad Idea, leaving the safety of an audience even in the most superficial sense with the mech who had gone toe to toe with a Prime for more years than anyone cared to recall. But Ratchet was a forged medic, which meant he was built like a tank without the missile launcher, and he could take a hit and come back up swinging. Maybe it would be worth it, anyways, just to see the slagger tossed in a cell for the weekend. No ceremony. No fuss. Plenty of time for Rung to rethink what kind of creep he was conjunxing.

Megatron stepped down into the rows of seating and Ratchet marched after him.

A little home with a sensible hospital administrator, a theater in the burgeoning cultural district putting on little plays for ‘cons pretending to be artists. How long could this farce last? Until Megatron tired of paying miniature dictator in a small community theater? Until Megatron tired of Rung? Ratchet settled in at Megatron’s side in the aisle, and thought uncharitable thoughts about the whims of tyrants.

“Allow me to be clear,” Megatron said, without shifting his attention from the stage. “The only reason I am not having you taken out right now and dropped in an energon well is that Starscream tells me you’re expected at the reception, and I would rather not have to explain to Rung why his guest is in the ICU having crude pumped out of his tanks.”

“That’s real nice, opening with threats. Let me hit you with one of my own.” Ratchet turned to glare up at Megatron’s impassive face, hoping the murderous intent was palpable. “If you so much as scratch Rung’s  _ paint, _ I will kill you. I don’t care about peace, I don’t care about medical oaths—if you hurt that poor sweet mech, I will  _ kill _ you.”

“Oh, if  _ I  _ hurt him?” Megatron said, optics blazing. “Where were you when the Functionists were taking him apart week after week? Where were you when he had his license pulled, when he was betrayed and exiled? Did you give him a place to stay? Did you give him your spark? Did you hold him while he shivered and cried?”

Ratchet grimaced, palms coming up half in surrender and half in discomfort. “Alright, alright, calm down.”

Megatron eyed him. “You came in here to threaten me and you want  _ me _ to calm down?”

Ratched shrugged tightly. “Figured you’d be used to it by now,” he said. “Didn’t know you’d be so  _ sensitive _ about it.”

“You are  _ sorely _ testing my patience, Autobot.”

Ratchet reconsidered his options. Provoking violence out of Megatron was sounding less and less like a viable plan to save Rung from a guttered spark and more like a way to restart the whole damn war. He worked his jaw, trying not to say something that would get him punched through a window. Instead they stood there in awkward silence, watching Sixshot run through his lines up on stage. Ratchet felt wrong-footed, uneasy, with something that wanted to be guilt bubbling up in his tanks, and he wasn’t sure why. He refused to feel guilty for hurting the slagmaker’s  _ feelings. _ If Megatron even had any of those beyond ‘rage’ and ‘entitlement.’

“I’ve waited here for years,” said Sixshot, shifting dizzyingly from tank to starfighter to cyberwolf as he mechanically recited his lines. “And no one has ever come to find me. Not even Primus.” He shifted again, the transformation jerky and somehow  _ wrong, _ and pointed himself as a laser pistol straight at Ratchet’s spark.

Ratchet forced himself not to give ground. “Isn’t this a rehearsal?” he muttered. “Sixshot’s going off-script.”

“That is the script,” said Megatron. “It’s alienation—defamiliarization. By engaging the audience in unexpected ways, you force them to confront the fact that they are watching  _ actors. _ That this is not a self-contained world, but a performance that they are meant to critique.”

Ratchet couldn’t help the face he made. So much for  _ more his speed. _ “What happened to having fun?”

“I’m not interested in presenting  _ Prima’s Exile _ to a credulous mob,” said Megatron. “It’s practically functionist propaganda. It deserves to be torn apart.”

“It’s the most famous play in Cybertronian history,” said Ratchet. Even he’d heard of it.

Megatron snorted. “Do you think that should protect it?”

Ratchet rubbed his chevron. Marriage, theater—nothing about today had been what he expected. He longed for a fragmented t-cog to extract, a triple casing bypass,  _ anything _ rather than this.

“Why are you doing this to him?” Ratchet said. “Getting his hopes up, making a big  _ party _ of it, showing off—”

“To be frank,” Megatron said, mouth curling downward, “I just wanted to go down to the hall of records and sign the blasted nuptial forms today, and then perhaps buy Soundwave dinner for the trouble of being our witness. Unfortunately, by the time I clarified such, Starscream had already invited half the planet to the reception.”

There was a shuffle and guilty  _ bang _ as one of the set pieces fell through the arms of a stagehand who had been too busy watching Megatron out of the corner of his eye to pay attention to what he was being handed.

“Anyway,” Megatron said, “the party will make Rung happy. He’s had few enough moments to celebrate in his life, I’d be remiss to deny him one more.”

“...Is that what this is about?” Ratchet asked. “Placating him? Giving him some meaningless title so he’ll stay where you want him?”

Megatron shrugged. “If it’s so meaningless, why do you care who I give it to?”

“Because  _ Rung _ cares,” Ratchet retorted. “You should have seen him come in this morning, he was so mooney I thought someone had spiked his breakfast. You’re probably used to getting whatever you want, having your way with whoever you like in that little cult of personality you called an army—everyone knows you and Screamer are fragging, I’m sure that’s only the  _ start _ —but why can’t you just leave Rung out of it? He deserves better than some sideshow marriage to make him shut up and sit down while you go running around having affairs and starting wars! Because that’s what conjunxing is! It’s all a big scam, it’s nothing better or more holy than promoting your secretary to executive assistant because they’re spreading their legs for you! And I’ve had enough of that, and I’ve had enough of  _ you!” _

Ratchet realized he had run out of words at the same time he realized the entire theater had gone pin-drop silent. His fans were spinning madly inside his chassis, the whirr of them almost deafening in the quiet. The audience of poorly-reformed cons, closer and more interested than he’d realized, watched him with narrowed optics and half-bared teeth.

“I agree with you,” said Megatron.

It took a moment for Ratchet to process the words, past the rush of air in his chest. “What?”

“Conjunxing is a scam,” said Megatron, just loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room. “Making it  _ official  _ doubly so. Must we rank our relationships by how willing we are to sign a datapad and pay a fee? By the number of toasts we drink at the reception, or the number of times we dance? No. A relationship is a series of moments. Every moment that I held Rung’s hand in mine, every moment that I felt the warmth of his spark, every moment—” Megatron’s voicebox stuttered, and he coughed to start it again. “—Every moment where he looked at me with disappointment or with joy, I knew that I belonged to him. The rest is only paint and polish, a show for that credulous mob. But Rung wants the show, and I intend to give it to him.”

Every word was dropped like a brick onto Ratchet’s feet, and Ratchet struggled to kick them away. “Starscream said—”

“What does Starscream have to do with it?” Megatron waved the spectre of Starscream away. “I agree with you,” he repeated. “Rung deserves better than me. But that’s all that I can offer him, and I’m lucky enough that he chose to take it.”

\---

Ratchet struggled home at the end of the day more exhausted than if he’d done a triple shift on the floors without backup. There were nearly a hundred new messages in his inbox. He ignored them all. He made himself a cube of the tasteless long-lasting stuff he kept around the place for his few nights spent at home, absently wiping off dust on the counter as he waited for the preservative sediment to finish settling at the bottom. He hadn’t exactly been young when the war broke out, but ever since the Pax Optima, he was really feeling his age. Especially on days like these, when there was no work to bury himself in.

Sometimes he looked at Pharma and he wondered why he felt so old, when Pharma still seemed so much the same as ever—brittle, yes, but full of vicious light. There were moments when Ratchet looked across the surgical suite and thought that it was a few thousand years ago, before the break up and the break ins and the three separate restraining orders. Back when he thought they were happy.

Ratchet settled back into the corner of the kitchen counter and commed Optimus. 

“Status,” Optimus said immediately, on alert as always, as if any correspondence could be the overture to some dire new life or death mission. But he’d been like that even before the war. Ratchet blamed Senator Shockwave’s influence, often and loudly.

“Hey,” Ratchet said, allowing himself to sound as tired as he felt. “Alive, definitely not de-spined by an angry Decepticon fiance, as much as I’m sure he would have enjoyed it.”

It was easy to imagine Optimus relaxing at the reassurance. Where was he, was he home by now too? Maybe he was sitting in that messy library he’d cobbled together, full of dedicated datapads and memory sticks of every size and shape. Maybe he’d been flicking idly through his collection of historical romances before Ratchet’s comm disturbed him. 

“Optimus,” Ratchet said, squinting at the dull glow of his dinner, “I think the slagger’s serious about all this.”

Optimus was quiet for a moment. “Well,” he said, “that’s good, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Ratchet said, “it’s still  _ Megatron. _ Even if he’s not just going to lock Rung in a harem ‘til all are one, he’s still the mech who nearly ripped your spark out on a bridge somewhere.”

“Oh, don’t hold  _ that _ against him,” Optimus said. “I nearly ripped his out on the same occasion.”

Ratchet grunted. He knocked back the rest of the tasteless energon, spitting a mouthful of gritty sediment into the disposal. “At least it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be another one of those insufferable  _ living trophy  _ ceremonies from before the war. I might not have to drink my tank capacity in engex to survive this.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” Ratchet said, gesturing at nothing Optimus would be able to see, “crystal glasses, gold, basically a fancy prison sentence with a dance floor. Primary conjunx makes a two hour speech about what a success he is while the subordinate conjunx just sits there and tries to look dutiful.”

Optimus let out a laugh that was half incredulous static. “You thought this was going to be an uppercrust wedding? Seriously?”

Ratchet scowled. “That’s what a reception  _ is, _ Optimus.”

“You know other people got conjunxed too, right?”

_ "I _ never saw them,” Ratchet retorted. 

“Ratchet, I care for you deeply and you’re my oldest friend,” Optimus said, “but I think sometimes you forget that you’ve got a sort of limited perception of the world. There was a whole planet full of people other than Proteus and his ilk. Some of them were in love too.”

“I know people were in  _ love," _ Ratchet snapped. “You don’t think I know there were other people on the planet? I flushed the boosters out of half of Rodion, not to mention I patched up every stray you brought me for centuries.”

Optimus sighed. “I’m not saying you’re a snob, because you’re the  _ furthest _ thing from a snob that I have ever had the good fortune to split a hangover cure with, but consider this: most of the low class mechs you’ve ever met have been on a slab in a back alley clinic. They don’t exactly stick around once the transaction is done. The only people who  _ would _ have invited you to their reception were blue-wired crankshafts. I’m probably the lowest class friend you had, before the Autobots.”

Ratchet rapped his fingertips against the counter, but he didn’t argue. Of the few people he considered anywhere close to friends, most were medics like himself. And medics had their own sort of culture, born of decades packed in close quarters trying to survive the rigors of med school. None of them ever got conjunxed. There just wasn’t  _ time  _ for it.

“The politicians were open about it,” Optimus said, “they could afford to be. Your average citizen was more reticent about making it official. I got called in to check out one or two while I was on the force—noise complaints mostly, though sometimes we had to break up fights towards the end of the evening. They’d usually be in some warehouse or a bar where the couple knew the owner, although once I saw a party in an abandoned construction lot at the edge of town and I’m pretty sure it was a conjunxing, there was all this smashed ceramic on the ground—”

_ "What?” _

“For good luck,” Optimus said. “You bring something ceramic and you break it. I’m not sure why exactly. And then at the end of the night, all your friends drag you up to a private room and, er, encourage a different kind of noise complaint. Lots of catcalling, as I recall.”

Ratchet’s mouth twitched upward at the sudden edge of embarrassment in his friend’s voice.

“Less powerful people had to be more careful,” Optimus went on, “it was hard to get a license to conjunx if you didn’t fit the exact criteria the functionist politicians were willing to allow for. And the census department would launch full fraud investigations if they got wind of conjunxing without a marriage license. They couldn’t do much on their own, but they’d tag every single minor infraction they turned up and hand it over to the precinct for prosecution. It could really tangle an average person’s legal record.”

“Mm. Deadlock said something about that,” Ratchet allowed. 

“Did he?” Optimus said, a touch warily. He’d never quite gotten past the  _ Killing Autobot Scum _ thing, as far as Deadlock was concerned. “Hard to imagine him taking an interest in romance.”

Ratchet thought about the series of weird expressions the kid had made over the course of their conversation earlier. “I think you’d be surprised,” he said, after a moment. “He’s definitely hung up on Rung. I never realized the mech was such a hot commodity.”

The comm line stayed open, a familiar and comfortable silence falling between the two of them as Ratchet leaned against the counter. Despite everything, he did feel better about things. Maybe it was just Optimus’s matter-of-fact reassurance, his reliable ever-steady confidence—

“Wait,” Ratchet said, frowning, “if you knew all that, what were  _ you _ worried about?”

“Oh.” Optimus sounded surprised by Ratchet’s surprise. “I figured that Starscream might have a bomb installed in the venue or, I don’t know, he’d try to frag Rung in front of me. You  _ don’t _ think he’d bring a bomb, do you? Maybe I should stake out the location…”

“Oh come on. That wouldn’t happen. He might be a greasy spawn of a glitch, but he’s still a  _ senator." _

Optimus made an extremely unconvinced noise.

Ratchet smiled despite himself. “Tell you what, I’ll see you at the reception, eh? Apparently we’re sitting together. Save me a drink, I still reserve the right to get slagged out of my processor if this thing goes sideways.”

They said their usual goodbyes, and then it was only Ratchet alone in his dusty kitchen, in his rarely used apartment, in the red-tinted gloom. The silence felt less friendly, without Optimus to share it. His berth would be bare and cold, factory standard, exactly as he left it the week before; in a klik, he’d have to try and make his spinning processor catch up with his already dragging frame. 

He remembered a time—iit had seemed to go on for so long then, but now it seemed so brief—when he had shared a place like this with Pharma. Before the fighting and the icy silences and the questions of who would take which posting and whose name should be on which papers and Pharma breaking down hysterical in the middle of the graveyard shift because Ratchet destroyed everything he touched and shouldn’t be allowed to ruin other people.

Pharma had planned their reception, he remembered. There was a definite tinge of masochism in the way he laid out each and every table seat by seat, every gorgeous movement of the orchestra and the long-winded speeches, almost as if he were tasting a wound, until Ratchet told him to  _ put that damn thing away for pity’s sake. _

He’d never liked the way the prospect of conjunxing made Pharma small, boxed him in and padded him until he was more doll than mech, until he was chewing through his own tongue with the effort to keep in his place. Perfect trophy conjunx. Perfect mate for a Prime’s personal physician. So prestigious, to have a conjunx who fulfils his function so well. Pharma was the perfect material for a subordinate, and by the time it all broke bad the acid he’d been gagging against to keep from swallowing down had already eaten him hollow.

How much of that was Ratchet’s fault, he could hardly tell. Maybe it was all him. Maybe it had always all been Pharma. Maybe it was just the whole stupid conjugal institution, a kind of slow poison in the tanks. Ratchet had been busy, distracted, dismissive. He hadn’t known what to do when the jealousy started, nor the hysteria. He’d buried himself in work and hoped that it would all go away. And then, one day, it had.

His apartment now was cold, and quiet, and it was better off that way. Ratchet lifted his empty cube in a one-mech toast, watching the glow shifting among the sediments.

“Hope you get the life you deserve,” he said. “Hope they can give it to you. For whatever that’s worth.”

And then he dispersed his cube, and went to fight for a few hours of decent recharge. 


	3. Castles in the Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For better or worse...

Rung had barely seen the station as it sloughed away behind the train, all of him rattling with so much joy that he almost feared it would have shaken him to pieces if he hadn’t been tucked securely against Megatron’s warm and solid side. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been so happy, so purely happy, without the bitter aftertaste of guilt playing around his mouth. He was not sure he had ever been.

That Megatron had ended the war for _ him, _ of his own will, not because of Rung’s gentle manipulation, his light-fingered facilitation, his unseen almost-treachery—that Megatron had looked at Rung himself in that Autobot cell and had said _ no, no further, no more— _

Megatron had wrapped his arm around Rung and pulled him in close, and then even the skyline of the city beyond their train car had dissolved into glittering sunlight.

In order to avoid the crowded public transports where Soundwave would be inundated with mobbed thoughts, Rung and Megatron had taken the train to the theater, where Soundwave lived with his cassettes in one of the remaining and renovated apartments. From there the three of them had walked the several blocks from _ Broken Cogs _ to the Tetrahex Hall of Records. Rung clung to these mundane logistics, just as he clung to Megatron’s hand, struggling to keep himself coherent in the face of everything that was soon to come.

The Hall of Records was another of those beautiful old buildings that hadn’t quite survived the war in one piece, although its state of disrepair was certainly more dramatic than average. Some time before the evacuation, Decepticon sympathizers had set off a bomb in the central chamber, and the explosive force had caved in almost a third of the delicate Iacon-style dome. Now, as they stepped through the ornate portico and into the hub of the library, they were received by strangely filtered sunlight. Jigsaw shadows played on the marble floor, deepening where the delicate blue and brown inlay was pitted with the scars of acid rain.

Rung stood there for a moment, awed by the profound silence in the great ruined hollow of something so old and damaged and still so beautiful. 

“There is no one here,” Soundwave announced, without appearing to investigate the space at all. He kept marching forward at a brisk pace despite that, through and under the crumbling chamber. 

“Mm,” Megatron said. He kept pace behind Soundwave, taking in the building in broad economical sweeps.

This must have been what they were like in the field, Rung thought to himself, as he rushed to catch up with their longer strides. They looked almost as if they expected to flush a sniper out of the shadows. “If there’s no one here,” he said, glancing furtively around the mostly empty archives of the once-grand dome, “should we—”

Soundwave gestured ahead, at the much less glamorous edge of what appeared to be a stairwell. There was a large makeshift sign pointing down at a basement entrance which bluntly read _ Clerks. _

“Surface level is abandoned,” he said, by way of explanation. “All surviving records housed downstairs, out of the elements.”

Soundwave walked with purpose, head lowered into each step as if trying to make himself a smaller target. Among the Hall’s artful geometries he was a matching shadow, dark and light.

There was always an uncomfortable edge to Rung’s interactions with Soundwave, when they were aboard the flagship together. Rung knew that if Megatron had not insisted, Soundwave would never have allowed a potential flight risk like Rung so deep into the ranks, let alone Megatron’s confidence. Rung’s presence had probably caused Soundwave many nights of sleepless anxiety, maybe even more so than Starscream’s flirtations with treachery. Rung had often wondered with some shame what it was that Soundwave heard inside of him, when they stood side by side in meeting rooms, when they passed each other in quieter hours coming and going from Megatron’s rooms… could Soundwave feel the strangled ache of love, the grinding guilt, the bitter longing to stay and the fear of what staying would mean?

Could he feel now the bright and terrible joy that threatened to split Rung open at the seams?

Soundwave stood aside and allowed Megatron to take the stairs first, his whole dark mass ducking under the doorway and disappearing into the gloom. Soundwave started down next, and then Rung followed in their wake. The stairs were deep, and Rung caught himself with a little jolt on each step, not quite sure that he wouldn’t fall. Halfway down, Soundwave looked back at Rung and offered up his blocky hand.

Rung hesitated. He had never known Soundwave to be open to casual tactile contact.

“Lower stair shattered,” Soundwave informed him, hand patiently extended. “It will be difficult for you to traverse. Will you accept assistance?”

Rung’s spark bloomed with a fondness that almost stung. “Yes,” he said, “of course.”

He took Soundwave’s hand, and allowed himself to be eased down over the not-so-very broken stair.

The winding sublevel took them eventually to a door tagged in hasty white glyphs: _ Notary. _ Megatron took the conjunxing forms out of his subspace and rapped sharply on the door with the back of his fist, making a sound more akin to a falling war hammer than a knock.

“Open up,” Megatron said, hitting the door once more for good measure. “We are here to pay deference to your exploitative bureaucratic strictures! Come out here and meet the most important person on Cybertron.”

Rung hid a smile behind his hand. “Not talking yourself up too high, I hope?”

“Nonsense,” Megatron said, “I meant you, of course. Come, archivist, we have other places to be today!”

Rung was so stunned and delighted that he almost missed the door finally swinging open and Optimus Prime sticking his head out.

“Megatron?” Optimus said, squinting into the hall. “What are you doing in my doorway?”

Megatron stiffened. _ “Prime? _ What is this? Why are you lurking in this wretched basement?”

“I _ work _ here,” Optimus said, “I’m the head archivist. What are _ you _ doing here?”

“I thought you were in government,” Megatron accused.

Optimus looked back into his office, and then at the door, as if reassuring himself that he was still in the same place. “This _ is _ the government.”

“I had assumed that meant you were on Prowl’s security council, not hunching over a keyboard in some dismal basement.” Megatron gave Optimus a long, suspicious glare. “I distinctly remember you being an enforcer before you shoved that relic in your chest.”

Optimus hesitated. There was something neither of them was saying, some shared memory hanging between them that Rung could only guess at—something that made Optimus’s grip on the door flex and Megatron’s mouth twitch.

“I prefer this,” Optimus said, at last. “It’s a brand new functionless world. I’d rather not be another figurehead hero cop for another series of self-interested politicians.”

Megatron didn’t look exactly disappointed, though it was close. “But _ bureaucracy, _Optimus.”

Optimus snorted. _ “You _ were the one who insisted I be barred from elected office. I don’t see why you should take my working in an archive so personally.”

“Here, then,” Megatron said, shoving the forms at Optimus’s face. “Be useful and file this for us so we can get on to more important things.”

Optimus gingerly took the forms and flipped through the first couple pages of hardcopy. “Is this for a conjunxing license? You need to see Rewind, his office is just—”

“Don’t you dare toy with me, Prime, this is the happiest day of Rung’s life.”

Optimus glanced at Rung, and an indescribable series of emotions flittered over his face before his battlemask snapped firmly into place. “Hello Rung,” Optimus said. “How have you been?”

“Wonderful.” Rung beamed and wrapped both his arms around Megatron’s much larger arm. “It’s been such a strange and wonderful week. Did you get the budget discussion wrapped up?”

“We had to table the new hire action plan, but the equipment allotments are mostly done. We were all a bit… distracted.” Optimus sighed and turned, retreating into his office. “Alright, Rewind is out to lunch anyways, I’ll notarize this and pass it off to him for you when he gets back. Soundwave, you’re the witness? You take this form and fill it out.”

Optimus keyed in a passcode and stamped their forms while Soundwave entered his witness credentials. The office was cluttered with archival files that must have been evacuated down here after the main roof caved in, making the whole thing quite snug around Optimus’ considerable presence. Rung couldn’t tell if it was claustrophobic or comfortable; it seemed to hover precisely between the two. On the edge of Optimus’ desk beside the heat-sealer there was a risque little bobble-winged seeker that bounced every time one of them bumped the desk.

With a bit of shuffling, Optimus handed back the carbon copies to Megatron. “What was the happiest day of _ your _life?” he asked.

Megatron flipped up the top page. “The day that Starscream eliminated the entire Senate in one go,” he said, and then paused with the second page pinched between his massive fingers. “I mean. There wasn’t just one day. Every day since Rung touched down in my headquarters has been a gift.”

Optimus cast Rung a sidelong look. Rung gave him a reassuring smile. It was so kind of Optimus worry—Rung knew that hearing Megatron blithely celebrate Starscream’s war crimes might have sent him into a guilty tailspin earlier this week. It seemed so silly, now that they were getting conjunxed and Starscream was busily planning their reception. 

They were getting _ conjunxed. _ Rung felt himself becoming giddy and instinctively tried to clamp down on his emotions before they became unmanageable. Then he looked at Megatron and realized that he didn’t need to. He was allowed to be exactly as happy as he liked. His smile was probably looking more foolish than reassuring, now. Rung decided that he didn’t care.

“Okay,” Optimus said, helplessly. “Er. Congratulations.”

There was a distant racket of clanging and banging from somewhere down the hall. Rung half-turned, antenna perking up.

“—Scraplet ridden dump of a—Rung! Rung, we’re going now! I’m late for my reframe!”

There was a bang in the hallway, and everything in the office shuddered slightly. Optimus reached out automatically and stopped the bouncing toy seeker with one fingertip.

Rung pressed a hand to the edge of Megatron’s chassis. “I’ll see you tonight?” 

“Of course.” Megatron took his hand and closed it in both of his own. Rung barely resisted the urge to bob up and kiss him in front of Optimus Prime and everything. 

Starscream ducked into the office easily, maneuvering his wings through the somewhat narrow space in a way that belied plenty of practice. It was a tight fit for all of them, even though the room had almost certainly been given to Optimus because it was the most spacious in the basement. “Let’s go,” Starscream said impatiently, “this body shop is _ extremely _elite, they won’t hold our places forever!”

Despite his rush, he leaned forward and flicked the little bobble toy so that it gyrated in a borderline offensive way. Megatron scowled, Soundwave stiffened, and Starscream smirked. Actually, the toy _ did _bear a resemblance to Starscream’s old frame from before the war, the one Rung had only seen in pictures. Although that had been a popular enough construction style that it was almost certainly coincidence. Optimus eyed both the toy and Starscream’s prodding finger for a moment before sighing and tuning both out.

“We can process the rest without you,” Optimus said to Rung. “It’s alright, you can go ahead.”

Starscream took that as his cue, reaching out and pulling Rung towards him by the arm. “I booked the technician with the best decal portfolio for you,” he said, “you’ll like him, he’s some neutral from out of the system. Of course I got Jumpkit for _ me, _ nobody else knows how to get my thrusters the way I want them—”

“Have a good time,” Optimus said, shuffling his desk back into order. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Starscream drew Rung out the door and into the hall, but not before they could both clearly overhear Megatron saying “What do you mean, tonight?”

“At the reception,” said Optimus.

_“You?” _Megatron’s voice rose incredulously. “You’re invited? You’re_ invited?”_

Starscream sauntered onward, dragging Rung behind him, wings bouncing as merrily as the toy perched on Optimus’s desk. 

“Starscream,” said Rung, hesitantly. There was a muffled shout and a bang from the room behind them. 

“No,” said Starscream, “we aren’t going back. I don’t care if Megatron pulls off Optimus’ windshield wipers entirely. We’re going to be late.”

“It’s not that, it’s just—” Rung caught his breath as Starscream lifted him bodily over the half-shattered stair. “Starscream, I’m _ conjunxed _.”

“Yes, that is the idea.” Starscream hustled them up the stairs and into the entryway of that beautiful broken building. 

“I’m conjunxed,” repeated Rung, wonderingly. “I’m. I. _Me._ _I’m _conjunxed.”

Starscream looked down at him, then abruptly knelt and brought Rung’s hand to his lips. He kissed the knuckles one by one.

“Congratulations,” he said. “Now, I’m going to pick you up, and we’re going to fly to the body shop, all right? If we’ve missed our slots I will never, ever forgive you.”

“All right,” said Rung, still dazzled by his new, wonderful status. He only realized that they were in the air when he felt the wind rushing against his face.

\---

Deadlock idled at the curb, trying and failing to transform and just walk into the building like a normal mech. He’d watched about fifty other normal mechs walk into the building so far, which was part of the problem. He _ hated _crowds, especially the unpredictability of a drunken crowd in an unfamiliar place. He could’ve handled it if he had his blaster with him, but that thing was a one-way ticket back to prison if anyone found out he even owned it. And Starscream would probably throw a hissy fit about unauthorized energy weapons and kick Deadlock out of the reception, and Deadlock wasn’t going to miss this for anything.

Except he _ was _ missing it. He was just sitting on the curb, being a wimp. He needed to transform. Transform. Fragging _ do it, _ come _ on— _

“—Seems like half the planet is here,” said a familiar voice. “Who do you think Starscream left out?”

Deadlock flipped out of alt mode and landed on his feet, a sharp grin sliding across his face. “Hey, Doc.”

Ratchet stopped and smiled, that little half-smile that Deadlock always hoped wasn’t just politeness. He looked good. He’d polished, that was clear, even shined up his headlights until they glistened in the light of the setting sun—

“Deadlock, isn’t it?” Optimus fragging Prime held out a hand, and Deadlock had to drag his optics up from Ratchet’s chest. “Good to see you out and about.”

“I’ve been _ out _for almost a year,” snapped Deadlock. He didn’t shake the hand, but he didn’t slap it away either, because Ratchet was here and he was being polite. “What are you, Ratchet’s plus one?”

The Prime—and, gratifyingly, Ratchet—looked pained at the thought. “No, I was invited,” said the Prime. “Starscream is… a friend, I suppose. A frequent bother, anyway.”

“Huh.” Deadlock couldn’t imagine that cutthroat slag-eater having friends, and _ bother _ sounded too mild. “Okay, whatever, have fun. There’s tons of your faction in there already—Screamer’s always out to _ network. _ I’m sure we won’t see each other again.”

“We’re sitting together,” said Ratchet. “You, me, Optimus, Aglet. I saw the seating chart, when I was—” Ratchet hesitated, his face taking on an unfamiliar guilty expression. “Nevermind. Come on, we can go in together.”

Deadlock couldn’t quite find the words to express ‘I get to sit with _ you?’ _ and ‘I have to sit with the _ Prime?’ _ at the same time, so he just followed Ratchet and the Prime down the crystal-lit pathway that led away from the road and toward the glittering obsidian-domed building at the center of the landscaping. There was actually a _ line _at the doors. Deadlock spotted Blast Off and Onslaught standing on the rolled-out purple carpet and thought about ditching Ratchet and the Prime to join them, whatever Starscream’s fragging seating chart said. But he’d have to push through a gaggle of useless neutral politicians, and Ratchet was doing that half-smile again while he nodded at something the Prime was saying about how amazing it was that Cybertron was already able to support luxuries like this, as if that was a good thing and not a nauseating indictment of the so-called coalition government. Deadlock couldn’t leave Ratchet to suffer through stupid opinions like that all on his own.

“Bet just this carpet could feed a war veteran for a month,” he said.

That silenced the Prime. He looked down at the carpet, shifting his feet in the pile. “You mean… is it _ edible?” _

“I mean the time and shanix wasted making it!” snapped Deadlock. “Don’t act like an idiot, you—”

Ratchet cleared his throat, and Deadlock realized they were almost at the front of the line. Soon they were standing in front of a gilded little monoformer with a gold-encased datapad. 

“Name, please?” he said, in a snooty Iacon accent.

“Ratchet,” said Ratchet.

The monoformer made a show of checking the datapad. “Ratchet of…?”

“I know for a fact I’m on that list,” said Ratchet. “Ratchet of Vaporex, alright? And this is Optimus Prime, you may have heard of him.”

“Oh, yes, here you are.” The monoformer tapped the datapad decisively, then pasted on a glistening smile. “You’re seated together. A waiter will show you to your seats, if you just step this way?”

Deadlock leaned over Ratchet’s shoulder before he could get left behind. “I’m at the same table. Deadlock of Rodion.”

“Hmm.” The monoformer pursed his intake. “I’m sorry, I don’t see you here.”

Deadlock grit his teeth. “Look again.”

“No, I really don’t—”

_ “Look again.” _

“Take it easy,” said Ratchet. “Look, why don’t we comm Rung, and he can—”

“Oh!” The monoformer beamed. “I think I found you. They put down an alias. Deadbeat? Of Aft End?”

Someone in the line behind them giggled. “I’m going to _ kill _ Starscream,” said Deadlock, working himself up to using the monoformer’s datapad as a shank, and then froze as Ratchet slapped a hand over his mouth.

Ratchet’s plating was warm and roughened by the hard work of saving lives. Deadlock knew he had to shake Ratchet off, but he found himself just standing there, breathing in the lingering scent of anti-rust grease and medical solvent.

“Here’s your waiter,” said the monoformer. “Have a good evening! All congratulations to the happy couple!”

“All congratulations,” said the Prime, seriously. Ratchet’s hand pulled away from Deadlock’s mouth, and Deadlock ruthlessly suppressed a whine. Unfortunately, focusing on that left him unprepared for Ratchet’s hand wrapping around his wrist as they followed the waiter through the vast ballroom.

“Sorry, did I tweak something?” Ratchet _ let go. _

“No!” Deadlock winced and dialed down the volume on his voicebox. “No, I’m fine.”

“You squeaked,” said Ratchet, but he mercifully looked away, scanning the room. “Wow, this is, uh.”

Deadlock followed his gaze. The ballroom was the classiest slag he’d ever seen. Everything was gold. The walls were decorated with golden glyphs of longevity and happiness. The circle of pillars holding up the dome were coated in gold leaf. The orchestra was playing delicate golden traditional instruments, like the kazoo and the keytar. A gold-painted waiter guided them to their little round table, which was draped with a golden foil, and pulled out their chairs for them. The chairs couldn’t _ be _gold, because they weren’t that heavy or that soft. But they looked pretty damn gold.

“Hey,” said Aglet, looking up from where he was spinning the tall golden centerpiece, some kind of tree festooned with crystals and stylized images of Rung’s smiling face and Megatron’s scowling one.

“Hey,” said Deadlock. The seat on Aglet’s left had a little card that said _ Deadbeat _ in elaborate golden calligraphy. Ratchet was already settling in at Aglet’s right. Deadlock circled the table and found that the place next to Ratchet was marked _ Optimus Prime. _ Deadlock took that seat, glaring at the Prime until he sighed and sat in the _ Deadbeat _chair. That left one empty place setting, a welcome buffer between Deadlock and the Prime.

“Who are we missing?” asked Deadlock.

Ratchet reached over Deadlock to pick up the empty seat’s card. “Starscream, apparently.”

Deadlock gagged. He was _ not _ fuelling and making small talk with that pothole. This whole event was a celebration of Starscream being removed from Rung’s life, in Deadlock’s opinion. Soon Deadlock would never again have to listen to Rung getting all teary-opticked about how Starscream had said _ thank you _ like a _ normal mech _ last night and Rung had immediately overloaded from shock. Deadlock would never have to help Rung pick out the perfect gift for the anniversary of the first time Starscream had let Rung hold his hand without shrieking and slapping him away. Deadlock would never have to think about Starscream, at all. Starscream would see that Rung and Megatron had a beautiful stable relationship, that they were basically made for each other by Primus, and then Starscream would go away and find someone more in his league to make miserable. Like… Deadlock pondered, trying to think of someone as horrible as Starscream. No one was leaping into his processor. Maybe Starscream would have to build himself a conjunx out of scrap metal and sewage.

“Starscream’s sitting at the high table.” Aglet waved a hand at the long table, raised on a (gold) dais, where Starscream currently had his back turned to them as he talked to Rung. “Maybe he’s keeping Megatron’s seat warm.”

Deadlock gagged again. 

“You’re not sick, are you?” asked Ratchet. “I think I’ve got some sodium in my subspace if you need to settle your tank, let me—”

“I’m fine,” bit out Deadlock. He just needed to take his mind off Starscream keeping anything of Megatron’s _ warm. _ “Where’s the dance floor?”

Aglet pointed. There was about ten feet of cleared space between the orchestra and the first of the densely-packed tables of guests. No one was dancing. Probably no one knew _ how _to dance to this kind of music—it was all buzzy airy notes and lingering crystalline tones, no drum beat and definitely no bass.

This was the worst reception Deadlock had ever been to, and he’d been to Turmoil’s third _ and _fourth conjunxings, the ones Turmoil had scheduled over top of each other so his intendeds could fight it out to see which one got the questionable privilege of living with fragging Turmoil for all of fifteen minutes before Turmoil got bored and decided to find some other mech to ruin just for fun. Ooh, maybe Starscream could leave Cybertron entirely and track down Turmoil in whatever dirty bolthole the coward was hiding in. They’d probably have a great time until they poisoned each other.

“Are Decepticon receptions always so _ tacky?” _hissed Ratchet. 

“Don’t be rude,” the Prime murmured to Ratchet. “Starscream’s clearly put a lot of effort into this.”

“I’m not being rude, I’m being _ blinded,” _ said Ratchet. “This much gold leaf should be illegal!”

Primus, Ratchet was _ so _ smart. He was completely right—allowing useful metals to be used as decoration by the upper classes had been one of the many ways the old Senate had ruthlessly priced hard-working Cybertronians out of manufacturing and artisan crafts. Who could afford gold edge connectors in their microprocessors or their chronometers when gold’s price was constantly being inflated by _ wing chains _ and _ crowns? _

“Megatron wrote a monograph,” started Deadlock, but of course Starscream chose that moment to stand up and start shouting. His top-coat glittered expensively, and swipes of burnt orange pigment under his optics highlighted their crimson glow even from across the room. He was, in fact, wearing thick golden wing chains that had probably cost more than Deadlock’s entire frame. Deadlock figured he could probably thank Rung that the vain credit-mongerer hadn’t topped it all off with a crown.

“Friends! Comrades! My esteemed colleagues in the Senate!” Starscream didn’t even have an amplifier, his voice was just _ that loud _ and _ that piercing. _ It was even worse since they were seated pretty close to the main table, so they got Starscream at full, painful volume.

“We are gathered tonight to celebrate Rung!” Starscream clapped his hands together, and a wave of applause swept through the ballroom. “And also Megatron, who isn’t here yet. But we can’t let that delay us! I hope you will join me in a toast, to my _ closest _ companion, to the mech who helped me on every step of the pathway to my success, to the mech who we should _ all _thank for his selfless service to our new future.”

The golden waiters were shuttling around, depositing shot glasses of orange-tinted engex at every mech’s elbow. Deadlock picked his up and sniffed it. Silly, he realized. Starscream would be a dope to use a detectable poison.

“To Rung!” Starscream lifted his glass in the air. “And also to Megatron who, as I’ve said, isn’t here yet!”

_ To Rung and Megatron, _murmured the room, and every mech raised their glass and drank. Deadlock held his vents for a long moment, but no one started crying out in pain, so they were probably safe. Maybe Starscream was taking the loss gracefully. It’d be a fragging miracle, but Rung deserved one.

“Anyway,” said Deadlock, “Megatron wrote a—” His optics lit on the glass next to Ratchet’s elbow. The _ full glass _next to Ratchet’s elbow. “Did you miss the toast?”

“I’m not drinking tonight,” said Ratchet. “Not unless it gets completely unbearable. Someone has to stay sober, keep an optic on things.”

“Not—Ratchet, you gotta drink _ something _.” Deadlock couldn’t let this stand. “Just keep your FIM chip engaged.”

“I’m not interested in wasting fancy engex, either.” Ratchet folded his arms. “Don’t worry, Rung’s got plenty of mechs toasting him.”

“That’s not the point!” Deadlock waved a hand for a waiter. “Let me get you some midgrade”

“I don’t need anything,” said Ratchet.

“It’s not about you,” said Aglet, and raised his own glass to drain the last drops. “It’s a _ toast. _ It’s a tradition. You drink for the couple, to bless their union.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Ratchet. “I’ve been to a reception before. It’s basically a drinking game. Someone stands up, makes a speech, everyone takes a shot.”

“This isn’t a _ game,” _ hissed Deadlock. “If you don’t drink, you’re bringing a curse on the new couple instead of a blessing. Do you want Rung and Megatron to be miserable because of you?”

Ratchet looked torn. “I can’t just drink half a shot for Rung, can I?”

Deadlock finally got a golden waiter to pay attention to him. “Hey, my friend needs something that won’t get him wasted, thanks. Bring me double drinks, okay? I’ll do his toasts for him.”

“This is ridiculous,” grumbled Ratchet. “Drinking isn’t going to make Rung happy. Apparently that’s Megatron’s job.”

“Frag yeah it is,” said Deadlock, and snagged Ratchet’s glass and drained it before the spirits of the universe could hear Ratchet being an aft and decide to take the opportunity to prove him wrong. It’d _ probably _ be fine as long as Ratchet was drinking _ something, _ but Deadlock wasn’t taking any chances.

“Remember, you’re a guest here,” said the Prime, leaning over the table to look Ratchet in the optic. “Don’t prove me wrong about being a snob.”

“I’m _ not _ a _ snob!” _ snapped Ratchet, and then snatched the approaching midgrade out of the waiter’s hand and threw it back. Deadlock started to say something approving, but found that he couldn’t remember how words worked when he could see Ratchet’s throat working, right in front of him. Close enough to touch. Close enough to _ lick, _ if Deadlock just leant forward and—

Aglet gave Deadlock a judgmental look, and Deadlock bit his own lip hard enough to draw energon. The judgment intensified. Deadlock defied it to stare longingly as the glass left a faint, tantalizing glimmer on Ratchet’s lips. This was exactly the sort of thing he needed to be out of prison in order to appreciate as it deserved. Aglet made a disgusted, despairing sound and turned away to say something inane to the Prime.

“Having fun?” Starscream’s voice grated in Deadlock’s audial input, and he reluctantly looked away from Ratchet.

Starscream was smiling. Deadlock felt an answering sneer tug at his own mouth even as his optics widened at just about everything else. The wing chains and the paint were one thing, but Starscream had gotten some fancy modding done just for the reception. Most of the armor had been cut away from his hips, leaving only a strip of military-grade plating connecting his cockpit to his groin. There were _ exposed cables _ begging to be played with. Deadlock could feel his mouth watering even though he _ knew _Starscream was a vindictive pit-spawned con-artist who wouldn’t put out for anyone under the rank of commander.

Rung looked just as beautiful, but demure in a way that suited a happy conjunx. He was wearing a thin plastic shawl over his shoulders, in a darker orange that complemented his plating and matched the color under Starscream’s optics. Bright jewels set in his frame flickered in the candle light, and broad, sweeping lines of silver and gold enamel drew your attention to his bright blue spark window and his matching optics, freed from the confines of his glasses. _ Primus, _ anyone could see that Megatron was the luckiest slagger on the planet. Deadlock dug his claws into his own thigh to try and distract himself before Aglet decided to escalate from judgmental looks to something more painful.

“Thank you so much for coming,” purred Starscream. “So happy you could be with us to celebrate this joyous occasion. I wonder if you could contribute to the couple’s conjunx gift? We’re paying for the deposit on this lovely venue.” He produced a bucket from behind his back and shook it to make the collected credit chips rattle.

Ratchet peered into the bucket with an odd look of disgust. “You’re pan-handling? At a _ reception?” _

“Ratchet, please,” said the Prime. “It’s traditional.”

“Yeah,” said Deadlock. “And smart. No way Screamer’s getting the deposit back on this place once stuff starts getting smashed.”

“Nothing’s getting smashed,” snapped Starscream. “Can’t you keep your destructive impulses leashed for one night in your life? Or do I need to send you outside with Skywarp and the rest of the irresponsible riffraff?”

“Frag off,” said Deadlock. “Breaking stuff at the reception is lucky. You gotta cleanse your aura of the burdens of poisonous materialism holding you back before you begin a new phase in your spiritual journey.”

Starscream opened and closed his mouth a couple times, like his jaw hinge was busted. Aglet was busy fishing a credit chip out of his subspace to toss in the bucket, but Ratchet looked at Deadlock like he’d started levitating and talking to Primus. The Prime just regarded Deadlock, calm and steady and practically begging for a punch in the face.

Rung fidgeted with his glasses, pulling on the chain that kept them looped around his neck, and looked fretfully over his shoulder.

“Hey, Rung,” said Deadlock. “You okay?”

“Hm? Oh, fine. Ecstatic, really, overjoyed.” Rung continued to worry at his glasses. “Starscream, how much longer until Megatron—”

“I’m sure he’s on his way.” Starscream looped an arm around Rung’s shoulders and pulled him flush against Starscream’s side, pressing a comforting kiss to Rung’s helm. “How could he stay away from you? He probably just got stuck in traffic. You know how his big, lumbering frame has trouble fitting in transports.”

“I suppose…”

Starscream tsked at the frown lingering on Rung’s face, setting the bucket down on the table and then reaching over to swipe his thumb over Rung’s lip as if he could rub the expression away. “Give us a smile,” he murmured. “You’re _ glowing _ , Rung, you’re _ so _ beautiful, Megatron would be a _ fool _ to leave you here with me.”

“What’s the standard donation?” Ratchet hissed in Deadlock’s audial. “Is a thousand shanix too much? What about just fifty, is that good?”

“It’s not about how much cash you can throw around,” whispered Deadlock. He glanced down as he felt in his own subspace for a spare credit chip. “It’s a _ gesture.” _

“Right, but is Starscream gonna shank me if I don’t—” Ratchet’s voicebox abruptly rebooted. “Oh. That’s, uh. Why is that happening.”

Deadlock looked back up and was greeted with the unpleasant sight of Starscream kissing Rung, coaxing and open-mouthed, his hand cupping the back of Rung’s helm. Rung’s optics were dim and he was leaning up into Starscream, his hands sliding into the cut-outs of Starscream’s hips and pulling a faint whine from Starscream’s cooling system.

The Prime cleared his voicebox, and Rung jumped and broke the kiss. He glanced sideways at them, apologetic but significantly more cheerful than before.

“There.” Starscream smiled affectionately. “That will keep you warm until Megatron comes to sweep you off your feet, won’t it?”

“Mm.” Rung leant his head against Starscream’s cockpit and sighed. “I hope he hurries.”

Starscream looked… pleased. Deadlock couldn’t understand it. Did Starscream think he was _ winning? _ Winning, when Rung was conjunxing Megatron, with all of their friends here to celebrate it, and with Deadlock out of the prison where Starscream had tried to stuff him? Deadlock stood up, not sure what he was going to do, but ready to fight. He was looking around for a weapon when he noticed the waiters.

They were flitting around, depositing new crystal shot glasses of vibrant teal energon at everyone’s elbow. Deadlock snatched his out of the waiter’s hand before it could touch the table.

“A toast!” he announced.

Starscream looked up from openly coveting Rung, his optics narrowing. “A toast? You can’t do a toast, I’m in charge of the toasts. I have a _ list.” _

“A toast,” insisted Deadlock, through bared teeth, “for the _ happy couple.” _

“Oh, no you don’t,” said Starscream, starting forward, but Rung somehow restrained him with just a touch on his wrist.

“To fidelity!” said Deadlock. It was one of the old toasts, along with happiness, health, wealth, and obedience to the state. Deadlock figured fidelity was one of the ones worth keeping around. “To being there for each other, forever, just the _ two _of you against the universe.”

“Oh, thank you.” Rung smiled. “But—”

“You call _ that _a toast?” snapped Starscream. He shook Rung’s hand off, darting forward and snatching the glass out of Deadlock’s hand. Deadlock lunged at him, but Starscream was suddenly out of reach, a short burst from his thrusters taking him into the air and then settling him on top of the table. The thin golden foil draped over the table melted around his feet, and Ratchet and Optimus jerked back as Starscream spun, one heedless thruster knocking over a half-empty glass into Aglet’s lap. Aglet’s resigned expression didn’t even flicker.

“A toast!” called out Starscream, his voice ringing shrilly over the chatter of the guests. “A toast!” He did another slow turn as the guests quieted and stared up at him expectantly. He stilled when he was facing Rung, and a grin flickered onto his liar’s face.

“To your union,” said Starscream, more smoothly now that he had a captive audience. “To your unending happiness in Megatron’s arms. To being _ one _ , one purpose, one love, one spark swirling in both of your frames. To your joyous _ fidelity. _ To never wanting for another mech to fill your berth or your life. To Megatron and Rung!” Starscream tossed his stolen energon back, his helm tilting to expose the vulnerable lines of his throat.

_ To Megatron and Rung, _ murmured the crowd. Deadlock tried to find another glass to drink, but every glass was being drained except the one in Rung’s hand.

“Aren’t you going to drink?” asked Deadlock.

“Hm?” Rung looked down at the glass as if he were just realizing it were there. “Oh, I’m waiting for Megatron. It’s silly of me, but I always liked the idea of conjunxes sharing their fuel at the reception. I don’t want to drink until we can do it together.”

“It’s not silly,” said Deadlock. “Do you know where—”

“You can have it.” Rung pushed the glass at Deadlock, already looking away. “Starscream? Starscream, would you please come down?”

Starscream tossed his empty glass at the floor, where it smashed. “I think I like it up here. I’ll do another toast. What about to Megatron’s giant spike, will that satisfy Deadlock?”

“Darling,” said Rung, voice full of steel, “I’d like to go say hello to Soundwave. Would you please accompany me?”

Starscream raised one thruster, peering at the melted gold leaf that had stuck to the rim. “I suppose I must,” he grumbled. “At least until Megatron arrives to replace me.”

_ “Darling,” _ repeated Rung, and Starscream relented, hopping off the table with a swish of wing chains and sending another empty glass to its doom on the floor.

“We’ll be back around,” Starscream said. “Don’t get too comfortable.” And then he swept both Rung and bucket away in a blur of orange drapes.

Their table looked like it had been hit by an airstrike. The gold foil was mangled, the centerpiece was knocked over to reveal the cheap plastic and styrofoam at its core, and there were crystal shards everywhere, just waiting to be stepped on. Aglet put the glass from his lap back on the table, and carefully wiped off his thighs with a (gold) napkin.

“What,” said Ratchet, “just happened?”

“I thought we were going to be shot,” said Prime, his voice oddly disappointed. Well, he was probably a masochist. You’d have to be, to let them shove an ugly relic of a spark-dead state religion into your chest.

“I thought Starscream was going to gnaw off Deadlock’s _ face,” _ said Ratchet. “Aglet, you listen to Starscream rant for a living. What exactly is going on inside that painted-up helm of his?”

“I can’t talk about it,” said Aglet, frostily. “I have ethics.”

“Yeah, yeah, ethics, this is _ life and death. _ Optimus thinks he has a bomb! Does he have a bomb?”

“I didn’t say he _ had _a bomb,” said the Prime, “I just said—”

“If Starscream was a threat to himself or others, I’d discuss it with the relevant authorities,” said Aglet. “Which you aren’t.”

“I’m your boss!” said Ratchet. “Basically, anyway.”

“You’re in an entirely different department.” Aglet folded all of his fingers together and set his jaw. “I’m not in your chain of command.”

“This isn’t an army, this is—”

Deadlock slowly drained the glass Rung had given him. It tasted… portentous. Like he was doing something important, not just drinking in Rung’s honor, but literally on Rung’s behalf. Deadlock set the glass in front of himself, along with Ratchet’s and his own from the first toast.

“Now that’s a shame,” said an oily voice. “That poor crushed little tree thing. Looked like beautiful craftsmanship.”

Deadlock whirled in his seat, fingers reaching for the empty place in his subspace where his blaster would normally be. The mech sauntering over to them was a lightweight beast-former of some kind, with prominent and unnerving denta—not fangs for tearing and puncturing, but rather something that seemed intended to gnaw open an armored chassis like drywall. 

He was holding an empty glass in one hand and dragging a chair behind him with the other, which he promptly shoved into the gap between Deadlock and Starscream’s empty place setting. He dropped into the seat, settled back, and kicked his little toe-claws up on the tabletop.

“Heya folks, how’s tricks?”

“Uhhh,” Ratchet said, eyeing the toe-claws. 

“Senator Rattrap,” Optimus said, recovering first. He held out his hand across the table. “I didn’t know you were going to be in attendance. I didn’t see you at the, er, coworkers table.”

A server passed behind them, and Deadlock watched the three shot glasses in front of him fill up with glowing orange engex, one after the next.

“I was in the neighborhood,” Rattrap said. “Heard youse guys havin’ a party, thought I’d come see what all the free booze was about. Refill over here, pal, please and thanks!”

“You weren’t invited?” Optimus asked.

“Mm?” Rattrap looked away from the engex splashing into his glass. “Not _ technically _ speakin’. Hadda do some huntin’ to see what kinda digs the boss came up with after all week skippin’ lunch dates with yours truly. Very secretive mech, Senator Starscream. You’da almost thought he didn’t _ want _ his good pal Rattrap finding out about this shindig.”

“So you invited yourself,” Ratchet said, warily.

“Aw, I’m sure my invite just got lost in the mail. Who wouldn’t want me at a party? I can cut a rug like you wouldn’t believe. Gotta do the old faction proud, and boy do we need it, judging from the state of that no-man’s-land over there. Not much for dancing, your average senator, eh?”

“A Decepticon can dance circles around any one of you Autobots,” Deadlock said, just tipsy enough to let his competitiveness shine through. “Just get them to change this slagheap runoff to something with a beat, and I’ll personally show you how to kill a dance floor.”

“With you, buddy, I’d be worried about gettin’ charged as an accessory.” Rattrap switched his attention across the table. “OP, who’s your date there?”

Optimus’s expression was caught somewhere between exasperation and discomfort. “Ratchet isn’t my date, Senator.”

“C’mon boss, I know who Ratchet is. I meant fingers, the one sitting next to you,” Rattrap said, with a grin in Aglet’s direction. “You look like you know how to show a bot a good time. You got a dance card, 'con?"

"No," Aglet said.

“Suitcherself,” Rattrap said.

Across the ballroom, Starscream’s strident voice called out for another toast. “To peace! To your happiness in the new Cybertron you created, together! To Rung! And also Megatron, who sadly is _ still _not here!”

“To Rung and Megatron,” they all dutifully responded, lifting their glasses. 

When Deadlock set down the third and final glass, somewhat winded from taking that much high grade in such short succession, Rattrap was smacking his lips.

“Ain’t there any snacks around here?” he asked. “I can’t do this much booze without snacks. Hey, waiter! Hey! Service!”

“So that’s Rattrap,” Aglet said in a low voice, while Rattrap’s attention was on harassing the staff. “From what I’ve _ heard, _I was expecting more of a, hm, more of a horrible trash gremlin.”

“There’s no need for that kind of beast-former prejudice,” Prime said, all disappointed and holier than thou. “Rattrap was a loyal Autobot for—Oh.”

Senator Rattrap had wedged his arm into the table’s demolished decorative centerpiece and begun eating the plastic wrap off the bottom of it.

“Ah,” Aglet said, sitting back. “There it is.” 

“How did he get elected?” Ratchet hissed, leaning into Deadlock’s audial.

Deadlock just shrugged. More than once at the hospital he’d seen Ratchet scheduled to pump the tanks of some bot who just couldn’t resist the crinkly allure of organic packing materials. The senator must have guts made of iron to be putting away plastic at that rate. 

“There was a dearth of eligible beast-formers on the ballot,” Prime admitted. “I’m given to understand he _ is _ popular with the constituency.”

Meanwhile, Rattrap had moved on to the styrofoam inside the centerpiece, which he was removing in fluffy white chunks and sucking off his claws.

To avoid thinking about how much hell Ratchet would give him if he also snuck a small bite of plastic, Deadlock snatched up a glass and held it out to a passing waiter for a refill. Just in time, because Starscream was already calling the next toast.

“To your health!” Starscream said. “So many of us would not be here today if not for your willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty to keep us from falling apart. You remain as indispensable in peace as in wartime. Let’s hope Megatron can pay you back the care and concern you’ve spent on his behalf. To Rung! Oh, and Megatron too, of course.” 

It was a good enough thing to toast, Deadlock grudgingly admitted, although he would have liked it given by someone else. Rung’s quiet kindness had shone through even the darkest of those bad days before they finally lost the war. It was why Deadlock had gone with him, when Rung showed up outside of his prison cell, promising him a future if he was willing to work for it. It was also why Deadlock was determined to down all three of these shots regardless of the warning messages he was getting on his HUD.

Ratchet sipped his midgrade, still looking resentful. “How many of these toasts are we gonna do?” 

“Thirteen,” said Aglet, wiping his mouth. “Thirteen toasts for thirteen Primes.”

“That’s very… traditional,” said the Prime.

Deadlock sneered. “Don’t get too excited. It’s not like we’re toasting for _ you.” _

“You’re going to die if you try to do triple shots for thirteen toasts,” said Ratchet, flatly. “It doesn’t even matter if you reengage your FIM chip, that much engex will eat your tank.”

“Aw, come on, Doc!” Rattrap patted Deadlock’s back. “Let the kid take a crack at it. Hey, tell ya what, maybe some insulation in your insides will help. Want some styrofoam?”

“He doesn’t want any _ styrofoam.” _Ratchet reached over Deadlock to slap the offending snacks out of Rattrap’s hand. “Do you know what that slag does to your protoform?”

“Yep!” said Rattrap, happily, and scooped the styrofoam off the floor and straight into his maw.

Deadlock couldn’t move. Ratchet was _ right there, _ still leaning over him to glare at Rattrap, and if Deadlock slumped even a little his thigh would make contact with Ratchet’s _ knee. _ Another warning flashed on Deadlock’s HUD, this one about the need for regular vent cycles in order to combat his rising temperature. Deadlock tried to open his vents from where they’d clamped, but he was frozen. Ratchet was _ right there. _

Deadlock caught Aglet’s optics pleadingly. Aglet considered him for a long moment—the mech was _ cold _under that scrawny exterior—then sighed and carefully shifted his long stringy limbs until he unfolded to stand on his chair.

“A toast!” he announced in a sonorous voice, like a Golden Age news broadcaster.

“Aglet!” shrieked Starscream, from across the room. _ “You _ can’t give a toast, _ I’m _in charge of toasts!”

“A toast,” insisted Aglet, “to the best mentor I could ever ask for, and for the best leader we had. I survived everything and everyone the two of you threw at me, and I’m mostly the better for it. To Rung and Megatron!”

_ To Rung and Megatron, _ repeated the room. Ratchet shifted back, reaching for his midgrade, and Deadlock could vent again. Only for a moment, just until the waiter came to refill Deadlock’s glasses and he had to do three shots to ensure Rung and Megatron’s eternal happiness, but it was a _ vital _moment.

“I’m going to have to pump your tank when you pass out,” hissed Ratchet, in Deadlock’s audial. “You think that’s fun, having someone’s hands inside your chassis, yanking on your tubing and winching open your fuel valves?”

Deadlock’s vents clamped again. Oh, frag, what if Ratchet decided Deadlock had already had enough? What if he decided Deadlock needed to go to the _ hospital? _What if he transformed right there, loaded Deadlock up into the back of his ambulance alt, where Deadlock could lie on the medical berth and—

“Aglet!” snapped Starscream, his voice like cold solvent in Deadlock’s fuel lines. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Starscream looked incandescent with rage, outshining even Rung’s bejeweled frame from where Rung was still tucked under Starscream’s arm. A lesser mech might have gibbered and begged for forgiveness. Aglet merely shrugged and sat back down in his seat.

“It’s a reception, Starscream,” he said. “I was giving a toast.”

“But,” said Starscream, “but I had a _ plan, _ you _ saw _ it, thirteen toasts present and accounted for! Rung, Megatron, the union, health, wealth, peace, justice, me—Deadlock already _ ruined _ it, but—”

“You don’t need to control everything,” said Aglet, gently. “It’s alright to let go.”

Starscream _ vibrated, _mouth half-open, and then Rattrap reached out for another curl of styrofoam and Starscream’s optics locked onto the movement. “Rattrap,” he said, absently, and then his wings hiked up. “Rattrap! Why are you here? You’re not invited to my reception!”

“Your reception?” Rattrap pulled his claw out of his mouth with a little _ pop. _ “Huh. I had no idea you were gettin’ conjunxed.”

“I,” Starscream said, his wing chains beginning to clatter, “I mean the reception I’m hosting! For my friends! Don’t ask stupid questions!”

“No problem, boss,” Rattrap said, “that was my last one. I just came to congratu-tate the happy couple. How ya doin there, Doc? Havin’ a nice night?”

Rung gave him a thin, uneasy smile, leaning out a little from under Starscream’s arm. “Yes, thank you. Lovely.”

“You,” Starscream said, snapping his fingers at Rattrap, “with me. We’re going to have a _ talk. _ And nobody do any more toasts!”

Starscream stalked away. Rattrap made a lazy little salute to Rung and then followed at Starscream’s heels, dragging his chair away with him. In their wake Rung was left at the edge of the table, sagging slightly. He didn’t look so good, honestly. Deadlock frowned.

“You had anything to drink yet?” he asked Rung, leaning in slow and careful so he could talk to Rung close up but _ not _fall out of his chair. “You look kinda worn out. You should have some midgrade at least. Keep your energy up until Megatron shows.”

Rung rubbed at his helm with his palm. “No, no. I’m fine. I’m sure it won’t be much longer.”

Ratchet leaned over as well, looping his warm solid arm around Deadlock’s back to add, “You should at least sit down, alright? Take Starscream’s seat, he’s not using it.”

Deadlock swiveled his head, vision blurring a bit at the sudden shift before settling dazedly on Ratchet. “You’re touching me again,” he said.

Ratchet, visibly unimpressed, pulled his arm back. “Primus, okay, sorry. Big buff Decepticon can’t handle a little jostling, my bad.”

Deadlock wilted. Why was everything _ so hard? _He’d just wanted—He just—

Rung eased himself down into the empty seat, sighing softly. He toyed with the edge of his shawl, warmly tinted plastic crinkling between his fingers. The sound sent Deadlock’s processor spiralling away from Ratchet and into the forbidden territory of whatever Megatron and Rung had planned for their afterparty. Deadlock cursed Rattrap and tried very hard not to think about Megatron taking that shawl off Rung with his teeth. 

“Is this what it’s going to be?” Rung muttered, mouth resting in the cup of his palm. “Is this really what it’s going to be?”

Aglet gave Rung a sharp look. From Rung’s other side, the Prime leaned in to peer at Rung’s face.

“You don’t look happy,” he rumbled. “How can we make this the joyous occasion it ought to be?”

Rung looked away, to where Starscream was sitting at a table of intimidated-looking Senate interns, talking to Rattrap. Whatever Rattrap had to say was clearly upsetting—as they watched, Starscream picked up a crystal pitcher of beautifully pearlescent engex and poured half of it straight into his mouth.

“I want _ Megatron,” _ said Rung, his hands worrying at the chain of his glasses. “I want him here, with me. Starscream is taking such good care of me, I don’t want to be ungrateful, but this is our _ reception. _ Where is he?”

“Well,” said Ratchet, “what did he say when you commed him?”

Rung’s hands froze. “Commed him?”

Ratchet groaned. “Don’t tell me you’ve been stewing this whole time for no reason. Just comm him and ask what the deal is.”

“Oh.” Rung bit his lip. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. He’s probably busy. If he wasn’t busy, he would be here already. Or he would’ve commed _ me.” _

“You’re being ridiculous,” said Ratchet. “Give me his code, I’ll comm him.”

“No, don’t, it’s fine—”

“Ratchet, I’m sending it to you,” said Aglet. “Rung, I really think _ someone _ should comm Megatron. He should’ve been here by now.”

“I don’t want to be ungrateful,” repeated Rung, his voice odd and melancholy, and then reached out and _ took Deadlock’s hand, _ why was everyone _ touching _ him today? Rung had seized the Prime’s hand too, and was squeezing both hands grindingly tight as Ratchet stared into the middle distance.

“It’s ringing,” muttered Ratchet.

The orchestra was playing _ Micronus’ Gavotte. _ Starscream’s voice briefly floated over the room—“It’s _ not _ my reception, I’m not the one getting conjunxed! You think I want to be chained to a _ community theater director _for the rest of my life?”—and then faded again. Deadlock’s hand began to hurt, but he didn’t dare dislodge Rung’s grip.

“Hey,” said Ratchet, suddenly scowling. “Yeah, it’s Ratchet. Nevermind how I got this number, where the frag are you? What? No, I’m at the _ reception, _ with your _ conjunx, _ and about half of Cybertron!”

Deadlock nearly yelped as Rung dug his fingers into a sensitive transformation seam in his palm. He glanced over at the Prime and felt an uncomfortable sense of solidarity at the pained resignation on the Prime’s face.

“Yeah, he’s here. No, you’re talking to me, I’m still waiting for an explan—Oh, yeah? Well frag you too!” Static popped from Ratchet’s comm, and Ratchet winced and flickered his optics off and on again. “Haven’t heard _ that _ word in a while,” he muttered. “Not quite that loud, that’s for sure.”

“Can I talk to him?” said Rung, the fuel lines in his fingers pulsing against Deadlock’s half-crushed hand. “I want to talk to him.”

“Yeah, it’s mutual,” said Ratchet. “Just hold on, I’ll—”

Rung let go of the Prime and used Deadlock’s hand to haul himself half into Deadlock’s _ lap, _ leaning over Deadlock to talk into Ratchet’s audial. “Megatron! I’m here, I’m here, where are you?”

Rung’s other arm came up around Ratchet’s neck, half hanging from him and half holding him in place; his gripping hand stayed firmly holding Deadlock’s. 

“No—no—Of course not,” he said, “no—Megatron I _ love _you, what are—”

Rung paused, his optics blanching almost white. His hand on Deadlock’s hand tightened like a vice. “Address,” he said to Prime, in his Hospital Business Voice. “What’s the reception venue address?”

“Er,” Prime said, and then belatedly recited it to him. Rung repeated it into Ratchet’s audial.

Although Deadlock was too far away to hear Megatron’s voice on the comm, from the way Rung relaxed into his lap it seemed like he was easing out of whatever frantic mood he’d been caught in. Rung finally let go of Deadlock’s hand and let his own hand fall absently to Deadlock’s thigh, where it thumbed a line back and forth over his plating. 

Since there was the entire weight of a clinging noncombatant in his lap, Deadlock had no choice but to continue sitting there while Rung crooned soothing reassurances into Ratchet’s borrowed comm. He tried to think about anything except how many warm bodies were currently pressed against his own. Or how sweet Rung sounded when he was murmuring to his conjunx. Right beside Deadlock’s audial. While his hand was soothing over a seam in Deadlock’s thigh.

“I want to see you,” Rung was saying, “I do, I—oh,_ yes, _ I can hardly wait to—”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Ratchet said, interrupting the effusive and steadily more intimate promises of _ later. _ “I’m not a phone frag service, get on your own comms if you’re gonna talk like that. Yeesh.”

“Oh, I’m sorry Ratchet,” Rung said, “thank you for—no, Megatron it’s alright, you don’t have to comm me. I’ll see you soon enough, and then you can—yes. _Yes_. Goodbye!”

The call ended and Ratchet shifted back, but Rung didn’t get up. Instead he settled against Deadlock, seating himself firmly on Deadlock’s leg.

Deadlock deeply regretted every ounce of engex he’d drunk, and which was now trying to convince him that having his boss and Megatron’s _ conjunx _in his lap was a delight and not a death warrant.

“Is this all right, Deadlock?” Rung tilted his head slightly to look up into Deadlock’s optics. “I just—I’m a little fragile, I think. If I could just—”

“It’s fine,” ground out Deadlock.

Rung sighed and rested his helm against Deadlock’s chest. “You’re all being so kind to me. I’ve had a very—a very _ worried _ evening. I don’t know what happened, Starscream said he was _ sure _Megatron would be here at any moment. But Megatron didn’t even know where the reception was!”

Aglet coughed. As one, every mech at the table turned their attention to him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just something in my throat.”

“Hmm.” Rung straightened up and leaned forward, his aft sliding a little against plating that Deadlock was trying desperately to numb. “Aglet,” he said, in a very different tone of voice, “I’m so glad you insisted we call Megatron. That was very astute of you.”

“Sure,” said Aglet, warily. “Glad I could help.”

“I wonder,” said Rung, “if Starscream actually expected Megatron to be absent for quite so long?”

“I couldn’t say,” said Aglet, which even a drunk Deadlock could recognize as not the same as ‘I don’t know.’

“It’s interesting,” said Rung, thoughtfully, “I thought Starscream was taking this well. He was very clear that he didn’t want to be conjunxed, the one time I got him to talk about it. I tried to bring up the subject several other times, but he always found something else he needed to discuss. Some detail of the reception. I left it alone, in the end—I think that level of commitment feels very threatening to someone who needs to plan out at least three possible escape routes from the berthroom before he can settle down for the night. But he didn’t raise a single objection to Megatron and I formalizing our side of the relationship. That’s odd, isn’t it?”

“Hmm,” said Aglet.

“I talked to him about it,” said Ratchet. “He said you two were his best friends.”

“Oh,” said Rung, softly. His hand traced over Deadlock’s knee. “Oh. That’s—I wouldn’t expect him to say that.”

“Starscream doesn’t have friends,” said Deadlock, his filter firmly disengaged by engex and the warmth of Rung’s frame. It was true, anyway. Starscream had enemies and pawns, nothing in between.

“No, he doesn’t,” agreed Rung, a little sadly. He looked at Aglet again. “And despite that, Starscream saw that I needed stability and recognition, even if that meant a change in our relationship. That’s stunning, isn’t it? That he could want this for me?”

“Hmm,” said Aglet, tucking his fingers together and looking away.

“Hmm,” agreed Rung, and smiled. “You’ve both grown, you know. So much. I’m very proud of you.”

That cracked Aglet’s mask a little. “You’re lucky I’m not _ dead,” _ he said, wryly. “You’re lucky Starscream didn’t punt me out an airlock after our first session.”

“It would have been an immeasurable loss,” said Rung. “You’re the consummate therapist now, aren’t you? Protecting your patient’s privacy _ and _ meddling, all at the same time.”

Aglet crossed his arms and tried to look like he wasn’t pleased.

“Sorry, I’m not following this at all,” said Ratchet. “Starscream’s happy for you? Seriously? Optimus thought he was going to set a bomb.”

The Prime winced. “I didn’t say—”

“Everyone has different ways of expressing love,” said Rung. “It took me a while to learn that. I knew it academically, of course, but it’s always difficult to apply professional knowledge to your personal life. I wanted Megatron and Starscream to love me the same way I love them, and to love each other that way too. But they won’t, will they?” Rung turned to wink at Deadlock. “They’re too much the Decepticon to be as soft as me.”

“Starscream’s going to express his love with a _ bomb?” _demanded Ratchet, leaning into Deadlock’s shoulder again.

Rung huffed. “I was trying to make a _ point, _Ratchet, I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with—”

Deadlock couldn’t deal with this anymore. Everyone was too close and too warm and the engex was floating in his processor now and making him contemplate terrible ideas, like seeing if Ratchet would shut up if Deadlock just stuck his tongue in Ratchet’s mouth or if Rung could be persuaded to dig his fingers a little deeper into Deadlock’s thigh seams. Deadlock’s optics skittered over the crowd, looking for a distraction, and his attention snagged on an Autobot that he recognised only from intelligence briefings. Designation Jazz, once the third most wanted enemy on Soundwave’s Capture-or-Kill list. He was fidgeting… or struggling out of his chair...

Jazz swung to his feet, oddly graceful for someone whose optics were almost fizzling from over-charge. “I got a toast for y’all,” he called, resting what looked like most of his weight against that slagger Prowl’s shoulder as he lifted his glass. “M’mech says I gotta say somethin’ nice about the couple, so alright! You’re okay, I guess, Rung! I don’t like how hot and suspicious you are, but I’m pretty hot ‘n suspicious myself, so—here’s to that! Congrats!”

And then he tipped his head back and drained the entire glass in one go.

Rung gave his own frame a bemused once-over, tugging the plastic shawl down to cover his spark window a little more. Deadlock opened his mouth to offer to shoot that guy, if Rung wanted, but then the dreaded shrill from across the room distracted them all.

“You call that a toast?” Starscream was standing on _ another _table, this one surrounded by horrified senators and also a highly amused Rattrap. Starscream was also looking significantly drunker, swaying slightly on his thrusters as he held up a glass.

“You left out half of the happy couple!” he trilled. “Well. Well. I will _ correct _ your _ error. _ A toast to Megatron!” He waved his glass, and his wing chains chimed as he made a wobbly spin. Once he was sure the whole room was watching him, he stopped more or less facing Deadlock’s table. “To Megatron, who still isn’t here. Where is he? He was supposed to—Whatever. A toast to Megatron’s _ massive spike. _ It’s just. It’s enormous. Truly disproporproporsho—very large. And none of you are _ ever _ going to see it. It’s all for Rung now!”

The Prime buried his helm in his hands. Ratchet looked like all of the energon in his frame had rushed into his face. Rung and Aglet exchanged an uninterpretable look. Deadlock made steady optic contact with Starscream as he lashed out, snatched a pitcher from a server’s hands, and poured himself three brimming shots.

Starscream sneered at him. “A toast! To Rung, and also to Megatron’s spike. Such a _ pity _ he and his wonderful appependage haven’t gray—great _ —graced _ us with his—That he hasn’t _ shown up.” _

The double doors of the ballroom slammed open with a crash and a swirl of rain, and the annoying monoformer with the guest list appeared as a mass of gilded armor and flailing limbs thrown across the room and only barely prevented from hitting the wall by Soundwave’s timely catch. Megatron strode over the threshold, optics blazing and plating sizzling with acid.

Rung slipped from Deadlock’s lap to stand, optics shining, his hands pressed to his chest like he was trying to hold in his joy.

Starscream drained his glass and threw it away, where it rebounded off Senator Metalhawk’s helm. “Oh, how nice of you to join us!” Starscream waved a hand at Megatron. “Fashionably late to your own reception. What a _ beautiful _demonstration of your commitment.”

“You,” snarled Megatron. “You gave me the _ wrong address.” _

Deadlock shotgunned all three of his glasses, thanking Primus with each and every swallow.

“Did I?” Starscream tapped his chin. “What a shocking mistake. Why didn’t you comm?”

Megatron thudded a step closer. Guests at the nearby tables shrank away. “I was busy demolishing the abandoned building you sent me to.”

“Oh!” Starscream beamed. “Then I can cancel the work order! What a saving for the government.”

“And then,” thud, thud, “it began to rain.”

“Very sad,” crooned Starscream.

“Yes,” said Megatron, “I was.”

He’d reached Starscream’s table now. All the senators had fled, leaving Starscream to stare Megatron down alone. Starscream looked oddly hesitant. Maybe he was too drunk to come up with a cutting enough jab.

“I thought you’d left,” Megatron said—quiet, but his voice still carried in the hush of the ballroom. “I thought you’d finally taken Rung and left, the way I always thought you would during the war.”

“Well,” said Starscream. “Well. Well, I—”

“And then Rung commed me,” continued Megatron. “Frantic to know why I wasn’t at _ your _ reception. And when I arrived, I wasn’t even on the _ guest list.” _

“What,” said Starscream, still oddly breathless, “a shocking mistake.”

Megatron looked over at Rung. Deadlock felt his spark rise into his throat, just from being in the periphery of that look. “My love,” said Megatron, “I’m going to strangle Starscream now. I’ll be with you shortly.”

Rung gave him a shy little wave. Across the table, the Prime shifted so his hands were now holding on to the top of his helm. “Ohhh Primus,” he said, “I knew. I knew this was going to happen.”

With the instincts of many centuries spent in the company of Decepticons in general, and Starscream and Megatron’s whole _ thing _in particular, Deadlock hoisted Rung up into his arms, deposited him safely into a nearby chair, and kicked over the dining table to make a blast shield. All around the ballroom there was a thump-thump-crash as other Decepticons did likewise. Deadlock spotted a few Autobot tables belatedly catching on and grinned. Now this! This was a reception!

Amid the cacophony of bulwarks going down, Ratchet hoisted himself out of his seat. “What do those glitches think they’re doing?” he demanded, and started in after them, as if he was planning on hauling Megatron off Starscream with his own two hands come hell or high water. 

Deadlock tackled him. Ratchet hit the floor chin-first with a startled _ oof _ and Deadlock half-rolled-half-scooted him back across the ground until he was safely ensconced behind the protection of this extremely fancy table.

“Stay,” Deadlock ordered him, pushing his whole weight down on Ratchet the way you had to sometimes when someone in your unit got the mad-eyed urge to break cover and make a run for it. He liked Ratchet too much to watch Megatron tear his axles off. 

“Get _ off _ of me,” Ratchet complained, wriggling underneath Deadlock in a way that was _ not _ conducive to combat focus and also took them dangerously close to the kill zone. Megatron and Starscream were already going at it—Deadlock could hear the tinkling smash of crystal and the heavy rattling thud of armor against armor. Something whizzed past Deadlock’s head and he watched as the flying bundle of Starscream’s gaudy wing chains knocked Dirge to the ground.

The Prime had already fallen into a crouch behind the shield of their table, back to the stained tablecloth, and without seeming to think much of it he grabbed Ratchet by the leg and hauled them _ both _, Ratchet and Deadlock too, firmly behind the shelter with him.

“_ Optimus!” _ Ratchet protested. 

Deadlock’s vision swam at the sudden unexpected change in position, and he had to prop himself up on Ratchet’s chassis with one elbow while the room stopped spinning so hard. A green blur eventually resolved itself into Aglet, crouched with his wrists resting loosely on his knees, giving Deadlock an extremely unimpressed look. Deadlock bared his fangs and tried to look more menacing than nauseous. 

The Prime poked his head around the edge of the table, scanning the unfolding bedlam beyond. “They’re exchanging blows,” Prime reported. “Well, Starscream is mostly dodging but—mm, that looked rough. Ouch.”

“Great,” Ratchet muttered, “just what I wanted to be party to in my post-war retirement, a realtime fragging murder. Are these monsters actually _ cheering _ for it?”

There was a scattered whoop of excitement from elsewhere in the ballroom as two frames cracked against each other with a hard, low rattle. The Prime winced. 

“I’m likewise surprised by how enthused they all are,” the Prime said. “Starscream may be the instrument of his own suffering at most times, but he’s still a fellow Cybertronian, and a decent enough senator…”

Deadlock squinted at the two copies of the Prime sort of blurrily floating beside each other. “They’re not gonna _ kill _ each other, Prime. Don’t be such a—a soppy—such a _ civilian.” _

The Prime made a noncommittal noise and glanced back around the table. Deadlock summoned the willpower to haul himself up so he could look over the edge of the table too. He scrambled off Ratchet, clawing up the Prime’s side so he could get a decent view.

“Look,” he said, his finial bumping against the Prime’s, “—see how they’re not—see—you’ve ffg, fought Megatron before, does he do that when he’s really trying to kill you?”

Optimus Prime, who had gone very stiff under Deadlock’s slung-over weight, followed Deadlock’s wobbling finger toward the battle wreckage at the center of the hall. Megatron’s great dark hand swiped for Starscream, and Starscream stumbled out from its reach, tossing down chairs and tables between them to buy himself time.

“Screamer’s blitzed,” Deadlock said, _ “and _ he’s stripped off most of his armor. If Megatron really wanted to kill him, he’d’ve already done it. Kkkkch,” he said, miming a slice across his own throat, “straight for the cog. Disable, de, uh, de, _ de-brain, _ dispose.”

Deadlock let go of the table and slid back down to the floor, too tired to keep himself up. The back of his helm rested against the Prime’s hip in a weirdly comfortable way. Damn, the Prime had a hell of an engine. He could feel that rumble right through his protoform. “They’re playing,” Deadlock concluded. 

“Playing,” said the Prime. “By—” He looked back out at the melee, “by Starscream flying up to the chandelier and ripping it off the ceiling to throw at Megatron’s helm?”

Deadlock blinked at the sudden rain of plaster chips. “Screamer can fly? He didn’t look like he could even stand properly.”

“He sort of corkscrewed around,” said the Prime. “But he’s maintaining a good altitude now, and—nevermind, his thrusters just cut out. Oh! He landed on Megatron. He’s holding onto Megatron’s helm and trying to knee him in the face!”

“I’ve had it!” yelled Ratchet. He hadn’t moved from where Deadlock had left him this time, just rolled onto his back and raised his fists into the air. “I’ve been trying to be nice! I’ve been respectful of, of, _ alternative traditions. _ I haven’t even questioned why we’re all sitting around toasting a warmonger _ or _his spike!”

“Well,” began Aglet, “you did—”

“I have put up with a lot of nonsense tonight,” said Ratchet, his tone promising consequences if Aglet continued that thought. “Because, fine, I was an aft to Rung and his _ partners. _ But that doesn’t mean you can tell me that Decepticons express love through brawls!”

“Not all Decepticons,” said Deadlock, compelled to reassure Ratchet. “I can be really, really tender. If you’re into that. I’m fragging amazing at cuddling and kissing and whatever.”

Aglet kicked Deadlock in the side. Deadlock automatically reacted by jumping up and stabbing Aglet to remove the threat. In his imagination. In reality, he said “Ow! Frag off!” and tried to remember where he’d hidden his emergency knives.

Aglet kicked him again. “This is for your own good,” he said. “You’re going to thank me in the morning.”

There was a crash, loud enough to distract Deadlock from the mild pain of being kicked.

“Megatron’s thrown Starscream off!” reported the Prime. “And through a table! He’s wiping off his face—oh, there’s a little energon, I think Starscream split Megatron’s lip. He’s stalking toward Starscream… Starscream’s up! He’s running again!”

“I meant it,” said Ratchet, and started to heave himself to his feet. “I’m leaving.”

This time Aglet was the one to yank him back down. “Please don’t become collateral damage,” he said. “I really don’t want to walk Starscream through his feelings about that.”

“Megatron’s got Starscream pinned between a serving table and a pillar,” said the Prime. One of his hands landed on Deadlock’s shoulder, squeezing every time the Prime got excited. “Starscream’s jumping at him—Megatron’s swung him around and onto the table! He’s got both hands in Starscream’s hips! I think he’s going to tear—no, he’s just, hm. He’s stopped moving. Oh, wait, I see, Starscream managed to get his claws under Megatron’s chest armor. He’s probably halfway to Megatron’s spark! This might be a stalemate!”

“Great,” grumbled Ratchet. “Then can we get out of here _ now?” _

“Where’s Rung?” said Aglet, suddenly.

“He’s still sitting down over here,” said the Prime. “Rung? Rung, are you alright?”

Rung hummed uncertainly. Deadlock found new reserves of energy to haul himself up the Prime’s frame again, so he could see what the pit was going on.

Rung was sitting just outside the shelter of the table, his paint and polish pristine amongst the wreckage of the room. He was staring wide-opticked at the tableau of Megatron and Starscream. Deadlock followed Rung’s gaze, and as he watched Megatron managed to yank Starscream’s hand out of his chassis and shove Starscream back down against the table at the same time. Starscream screeched and kicked up a thruster to try and burn Megatron’s face off.

“Rung?” said Deadlock.

“Look at them,” said Rung, softly. “They’re _ beautiful.” _

Ratchet pushed himself to his knees. “Are you _ kidding me?” _

“I’m so happy.” Rung pressed his hands against his spark.. “I’m so excited for the rest of my life. Look at them!”

“I’m _ looking,” _said Ratchet, “and all I see is two thugs beating the slag out of—hey, where do you think you’re going?”

Rung had stood up and now was all but floating across the room. His shawl had half-fallen off one shoulder, trailing behind him as he stepped over broken crystal and table shards. Deadlock launched himself into a tackle at the exact same moment as the Prime, which is why they ended up tangled in a heap. Deadlock snarled and tried to free himself, but the Prime was heavy and Deadlock was very, very drunk, so he only succeeded in kneeing the Prime in the panel. Although that was its own sort of victory.

“Megatron,” called Rung.

Megatron didn’t look up, too busy fitting one massive fist around Starscream’s throat.

“Megatron,” said Rung, again, and tapped Megatron on the shoulder.

“Hmm?” Megatron batted away Starscream’s flailing, sputtering thruster.

“Love, it’s our reception,” said Rung. “Do you want to dance?”

Megatron dropped Starscream to the broken, listing table. “Of course,” he said. “Is there music?”

There was. There was one lone keytar player, who’d hid under the bandstand while the rest of the band had fled. Aglet—when had Aglet gotten over there?—Aglet was pulling the keytarist out of his shelter and pushing him on to the stage. The keytarist looked at the destroyed room in front of him, took a deep, shuddering vent, and began picking out the first few notes of _ Prima’s Waltz. _The song that had opened and ended every conjunxing reception in Cybertron for millenia, played by orchestras for stuffy senatorial balls and hummed by the guests at illicit gatherings on the outskirts of the city-states.

Rung put his hand in Megatron’s, and drew him over to the rubble-strewn dancefloor.

“Is Starscream alright?” murmured the Prime, his engine rumbling against Deadlock’s side.

Starscream was still lying on the table, his optics dazed, his cables hanging loose from his hips, one hand touching his throat as if feeling for any marks Megatron might have left behind. His knees shifted, and Deadlock could see that his panel was _ half-open, _ in _ public. _ Deadlock tried to tear his optics away, and couldn’t. The Prime’s engine _ thrummed. _

Deadlock seriously needed to get laid. He couldn’t take this anymore. If a traitor and an oppressor could get him revved up like this, he clearly had excess charge leaking out of his vents.

“Come on,” said Ratchet, quietly. He bent down and hauled Deadlock to his feet with warm, strong hands, then offered a hand up to the Prime. “Let’s get out of here during the lull. Let them enjoy their reception, and we’ll enjoy not being murdered by shrapnel, huh?”

\---

Outside was a jumble of senators, medics, actors, and miscellaneous celebrities, all of them talking at once, bickering over the limited number of shelters from the acid rain, and generally trudging the delicate landscaping into a sodden mess. Deadlock hung heavily off of the Prime’s arm and tried to figure out where his feet were.

The lilting music ut off with a keysmash. It was replaced by Starscream’s voice, the words made incomprehensible by distance, but the teasing tone perfectly clear.

“Oh, no,” grumbled Ratchet. “Here it comes. He’s probably showing them a giant bomb countdown right now.”

There was a moment of silence. Everyone was listening, waiting for the next move.

Starscream’s voice again. But this time he was _ moaning, _high and breathy. There was a rhythm to it, like the rhythm of a sparkbeat, like, like—

Ratchet was literally steaming, heated air pouring out of his vents. “I’m never going to look Rung in the face again,” he said. “I can’t _ believe—” _

The keytarist came running out of the venue, his optics wild with what they’d seen. Aglet followed after him, walking quickly but calmly, with the air of a mech who couldn’t be surprised by anything but would prefer not to watch it happen right in front of him.

“Oh!” gasped Starscream, loud enough to be heard in Iacon. “Oh, oh, oh, _ frag. _ Please! Harder!”

All of the senators were looking a little queasy, like mechs who were considering how they were supposed to compliment Starscream on the lovely reception without even hinting at what had happened at the end. Rattrap was the only one who seemed like he was still having fun—he was talking to some of Megatron’s actors, and chuckling at something Soundwave had just said. A little band of Starscream’s lackeys and interns were muttering amongst themselves, and as Starscream’s moans reached a shrieking crescendo, Barricade stepped out of the group.

“A toast to the boss!” he called, raising a shotglass that somehow still had energon in it. “And to the bigger boss who’s railing him!”

There were a few whoops and laughs and then Starscream somehow got even louder:

“Yes! Yes! _ Oh, _ oh, _ Rung…” _

The laughter cut off as the crowd, as one, reconsidered their assumptions.

“And,” said Rattrap, raising his own empty glass with a grin, “to the little guy who’s making Starscream sing so pretty.”

Starscream moaned brokenly, almost on cue. Deadlock felt his knees buckle, and dug his claws into the Prime’s arm to keep himself upright.

“Ratchet,” he said, urgently.

“No, you’re not drinking anything else,” said Ratchet. “I don’t care if you miss a toast, and I don’t care if it dooms Rung to a life of misery, your processor is already swimming in engex.”

“Ratchet,” repeated Deadlock. Primus, he _ wanted. _ He wanted so much, and he _ was _ so much more than Starscream, he _ deserved _to have something good. It wasn’t fair that Starscream was getting fragged right now while Deadlock was standing out here in the sizzling damp. He shoved clumsily away from the Prime, and then swayed, locking his knees to prevent himself from tipping over.

“What?” said Ratchet, impatiently.

“Ratchet.” Deadlock looked deep into Ratchet’s optics. “Ratchet. Ratchet, you’re so fragging _ hot.” _

_ “What?” _ squawked Ratchet.

Deadlock leaned in to kiss Ratchet’s beautiful strong lips and his tank _ sloshed _and suddenly all his weight was tipping him uncontrollably forward. 

Ratchet caught him by the chestplate and shoved him back to his feet. “Alright kid, you need to sober up before you collapse. Can you engage your FIM chip for me?”

Deadlock tried, he really did, but the trick of it kept slipping away from him. He banged on his helm instead, hoping he’d knock something loose.

“Stop that!” Ratchet grabbed Deadlock’s wrist, which meant Ratchet was holding Deadlock up with _ one hand, _ Primus and all his clockwork creations. Deadlock tried to kiss Ratchet again, but Ratchet held him at an implacable arm’s length.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but you look like you’re going to purge,” said Ratchet. “Optimus, is it all right if I abandon you? I think I need to get Deadlock home.”

The Prime nodded. “I’m leaving as well. I don’t think—” he winced as Starscream’s cries reached another crescendo, “I don’t think this spectacle will benefit from my witnessing it.”

“We can debrief tomorrow,” said Ratchet. “With drinks. Just not _ this _many drinks. Hey kid, hang tight for me.”

“Hnn?” said Deadlock, who was having to concentrate really hard on not purging now that Ratchet had mentioned it.

Ratchet picked him up and then transformed _ around him _, his frame shifting until Deadlock was lying on a medical berth in the back of a small ambulance. The berth was cool and dry, and there was a soothing beep of monitors paired with the thrum of Ratchet’s engine. Ratchet smelled seductively like cleaning solvent. Deadlock took in a deep vent, his back arching against the berth.

“What’s your address?” asked Ratchet.

“This is so nice,” mumbled Deadlock. “I feel so safe inside of you.”

“Address,” said Ratchet. “Where do you—you know what, I’ll just pull up your medical records.”

“I never feel safe.” Deadlock reached over to stroke Ratchet’s spark monitor. “Not since the end of the war.”

“You felt safe _ during _the war?” Ratchet’s engine revved as they started to move. “Stop touching that, it tickles.”

“Can I just stay here?” asked Deadlock, reluctantly pulling himself back from the monitor. “I’ll be quiet.”

“Can you _stay_ _inside me?” _Ratchet drove a little faster. “Absolutely not. I’m taking you home, you’re going to sleep this off, and then we’ll never speak of it again. Like grown mechs.”

“Oh.” Deadlock tried to hide his disappointment and failed. “I wish you’d let me frag you. I’m really good at it, I’d treat you right. Kiss you and hug you and lick you out after, all the stuff Autobots like. Or you could frag me, I guess, I don’t usually do that but if _ you _wanted to, I could—”

“Hey, hey, why don’t you just, uh,” Ratchet hesitated as he thumped over a speed bump, “lie there. Quietly. You don’t really want to have sex with me, you’re just drunk.”

“I want to have sex with you _ all the time,” _ whined Deadlock. “Whenever you come to Rung’s office I think about bending you over the desk, you’re _ so _hot. I wouldn’t do that, though. I just think about it. What are you into? Feet stuff? Do I need better feet?”

“You don’t need _ better—” _Ratchet sighed. “Listen, kid, I’m not relationship material. It wouldn’t be a good idea even if you were sober.”

“Okay?” Deadlock’s hand hovered over the spark monitor, but Ratchet had told him not to touch. He’d _ told _him. “What about just fragging though? We could frag. I want to.” Inspiration struck, and Deadlock leaned forward and licked the monitor, dragging his tongue across the warm, pliable screen.

Ratchet slammed on his brakes, and Deadlock fell out of the berth, tucking instinctively so only his back hit the wall.

“Deadlock,” said Ratchet, voice tight.

Deadlock stared up at the dazzling central light. “Uhuh?”

“I’m going to take you home,” said Ratchet. “We’re about a block away. I’m going to stay with you to make sure you don’t fall out of a window and break your helm. We are not going to frag, or make out, or touch each other. You are going to rest until you remember how your FIM chip works, and then we are going to have this discussion _ sober.” _

“Uhuh.” Deadlock relaxed against Ratchet’s walls. “And then we’ll frag?”

“And then,” allowed Ratchet, “we’ll maybe frag.”

“Awesome.” Deadlock relaxed against Ratchet’s walls, soaking up the contact while it was still allowed. Although it sure sounded like it would be again, in the not too distant future. Deadlock couldn’t wait. “This was a good reception,” he decided. “Even if it _ was _run by Starscream.”

“Yeah,” said Ratchet. “I guess it wasn’t bad.”

\---

After the cups and champagne and chandeliers; after the fear and joy and waltzing footsteps across shattered plaster; after sharing drinks with Megatron, passing sips of sparkling engex in open, hungry kisses; after making love amongst the wreckage of the reception until a nervous waiter finally emerged from the kitchen and threatened to call the enforcers; after Megatron carried both Rung _ and _Starscream across the threshold of the luxurious honeymoon suite he had rented with his own credits and thus claimed final authority over whatever transpired within; after all of this, Rung lay on the spark-chamber-shaped berth, pinned between Megatron’s overthrown arm and Starscream’s thrumming chassis, breathing in the faint sweet scent of an expensive hotel room beneath the burnt edge of a long interface. Megatron was lax and heavy and asleep at Rung’s side, but Starscream was still very much awake by the sound of his spinning processor.

“Not ready for recharge?” murmured Rung. “Did we not do a good enough job of wearing you out?”

Starscream scoffed. “I think my array is going to fall out. I’ll need at least a month to recover before Megatron can even _ look _at my valve.”

Rung dragged his fingers through the wet mess of said valve, humming to himself appreciatively as Starscream shuddered. “You can have as long as you like,” he said. “But then what are you thinking about?”

Starscream set his jaw, looking somehow both guilty and defiant. “Sorry,” he said through his teeth.

Rung paused in the act of licking lubricant off his own hand. “Sorry?”

“About the reception,” ground out Starscream. “Sorry.”

“Oh, no,” Rung cupped Starscream’s helm. “Darling, no. It was a lovely reception. You did such a wonderful job of organizing it.”

“Uhuh,” Starscream said, eyeing him suspiciously. “A wonderful job of fragging it all up, I’m sure you mean. You do realize that it’s my fault that Megatron missed the entire reception while he was destroying two-thirds of the vacant quarter, don’t you? I thought for sure he would comm you five times in the first five minutes, but—”

“I _ mean,” _said Rung, stroking the relay jumping in Starscream’s cheek, “you did a wonderful job. It was a beautiful night, and you gave so many beautiful toasts. I do wish you’d told me what to expect, but I did know what I was getting into. And, well.” Rung looked between his two partners, remembering fondly how Megatron had pushed Starscream out of the way after Starscream had reached his first overload and demanded his own turn on Rung’s spike. “I can’t exactly complain about the results.” 

“Yes, well.” Starscream turned his head away from Rung’s hand. “I suppose you wouldn’t, now that your conjunx is here. He always makes you happy.”

“I’m happy with _ you _,” Rung said, gently. “Starscream, I love you. You believe me when I say that, don’t you?”

Starscream’s jaw worked, as conflicting impulses warred for control of his tongue.

“Move in with us,” Rung said, impulsively, his engine ratcheting up to double speed inside of him. 

“What?” said Starscream, as his face went through another complicated pageantry of emotions.

“Move in with us,” Rung repeated. “Full time.”

Starscream’s face settled on indignant pride. “I already have a place! It’s chic and modern and it has a much better view than _ your _ little apartment. That’s a ridiculous idea. Move in with _ you. _ I’ve obviously fragged you stupid tonight.”

Rung pulled himself up from under Megatron’s arm and settled himself a little more firmly onto Starscream’s chest, tracing a turbine absently with his fingertip. “You know what I think?” he asked. “I think you’re wasting an awful lot of money renting that penthouse downtown, when you only sleep there so rarely. Most of your things are already in our guest room, so it’s not as if it would take you long to move the rest. And you must have lost a fair number of shanix on the venue deposit, hm?”

“I’ll just skip out on the creditors,” Starscream said, “what are they going to do, send an assassin after me?”

_ “Starscream,” _ Rung said.

“Fine, _ fine,” _ Starscream said. “I’ll pay the damn bill. I am a senator after all. And I got nearly fifty grand out of the guests.”

“So you will?” Rung pressed.

“Will I _ what?” _

“Come live with us,” Rung said. “You can have your own room, of course. I can’t imagine you’d enjoy the lack of privacy cramming yourself into the same space as us constantly. We’ll put you on the lease, move the rest of your things over—”

“Like Megatron would stand for that,” Starscream scoffed.

Rung considered him for a moment, lips pursed. Then he wriggled over and tapped his hand against Megatron’s slow-rumbling chassis. After a few firm pats, Megatron blinked on a sluggish optic.

“Mm?” Megatron yawned, displaying the half-healed split in his lip which Starscream had given him and which Rung had kissed until it bled again.

“My darling,” Rung said, “would you mind if Starscream came to live with us?”

Megatron peered blearily at him. “Thought he already did that.”

“Yes,” said Rung, ignoring Starscream’s hasty denial, “but I thought we could make it official.”

“Mmph.” Megatron’s red optic blinked back off. “Make him bring his own things in. I’m not unpacking his boxes for him. Got better things to do.”

And with that, he was out again. For a second, Rung just beamed at his exhausted conjunx in the soft perfume-smelling dark, rubbing the cords of Megatron’s neck with a tender hand. His conjunx. His mech. And then he turned his grin on Starscream.

“Well, there you have it,” he said. “You can move the rest of your things in tomorrow.”

Starscream looked a little blank. Rung waited a few seconds for a response, and then another few, and then felt the bottom fall out of his tank as he realized that Starscream might be trying to think of the best way to turn down this offered intimacy. What if—what if Starscream didn’t _ want it? _

“Darling,” said Rung. “I know—I know it’s not a palace. Not exactly what you dreamed of, during the war. But do you think you could make do with us? With Megatron and I, and our little lives?”

“Make _ do _ with you?” Starscream’s face lit up with anger. “Make do with—With you? With _ you? _I—” Starscream’s voicebox hitched and spat static, and he turned away from Rung to curl on his side, his wings bristling like a threat.

Rung reached out tentatively to stroke along Starscream’s spine. “Starscream?”

“Why do you keep _ doing _ this?” demanded Starscream. “Why can’t you admit you don’t need me?” 

Rung’s fingers froze in the air, hovering above warm plating. “Why would you think we don’t need you?”

“You came to the Nemesis for _ him. _ You conjunxed _ him. _ I’m just Megatron’s _ spare, _ that’s all I’ve ever been—spare leader, spare lover, a backup stand-in to keep waiting in the storeroom while he gets all the adulation and respect that could have been _ mine, _ if I wasn’t stuck playing second fiddle to an unkillable irreprochable _ titan.” _ Starscream’s upright wing flicked. “And then you actually thought Megatron would, would what, leave you? For _ me?” _

Rung tried to dredge up his memories of that horrible time. Four days ago felt like a lifetime. “I thought—”

“He never would,” said Starscream, viciously. “He fell over himself to reassure you, didn’t he? _ You’re _the ones who matter, and I’m just, just, what? Some relic from the war to keep in your spare bedroom?”

“I only thought you’d want your own space,” said Rung, stupidly. He knew that wasn’t the problem. He tried again: “Starscream, I want you in my life now as much as ever, I want—”

“I don’t want to be your amica!” Starscream snarled. “I’m not sticking around so that we can play bestest best friends and platonically cuddle and have _ lunch dates _ and you can look at me like you can’t see how much I want to be on the _ inside _ with you and him and that berth that _ I _ picked out the pillows for! Why even bother to keep me around now that you’ve settled on _ him?” _

Oh. Oh, didn’t that sound familiar? With a tenderness that was almost painful, Rung pressed his hand flat against Starscream’s back.

“I didn’t _ settle _ on Megatron,” Rung says, “I’m not choosing between you. I don’t _ want _to choose between you.”

“That’s not what anyone else thinks,” Starscream said, darkly. “I know what people were thinking when they looked at us. All night, all of them looking at us—what’s _ he _ trying to pull, what’s _ he _ got to do with this, he’s just the—the—the fragging _ reception planner.” _

“Shh, no, I’m sure no one thought that,” said Rung. “I have it on good authority that most of the guests were trying to find out whether you’d planted a bomb.”

Oddly, Starscream didn’t seem comforted by the implication that he’d been scheming to assassinate the bulk of Cybertronian high society all in one go. Normally that was the sort of thing he’d laugh about, showing off his sharp edges and relishing the fact that Rung wouldn’t be scared away.

“Rattrap asked me if I wanted him to submit another bill,” said Starscream, dully. “Allowing for multiple conjunx bonds. They’re not legal under the current private relations code. The Functionists didn’t like the idea of even one conjunx, let alone two or three or seven.”

“That would be nice,” said Rung, uncertainly. He wanted to see Starscream’s face, but he wasn’t going to try manhandling Starscream until he knew how Starscream would take it.

“I told him to do what he liked,” said Starscream. _ “I _ don’t want to be conjunxed. I just want to—to live in the fragging shadows of your _ grand romance, _ and, and trick scraps of affection out of you two before you _ notice _ that I’m, I’m not ever going to be like you, that I don’t _ deserve—” _Starscream cut himself off as his powerful engines hiccuped, trying to rev up and throttle down at the same time.

_ “Darling.” _Rung pressed himself against Starscream’s back, pressed kisses to Starscream’s helm and ran his hand down Starscream’s side while Starscream tried to get his hiccuping engine under control. “Oh, sweetspark, you know that’s not true. Don’t talk about yourself like that. Oh, I’m so sorry.”

Starscream hiccuped some more, shuddering under Rung’s hands.

“I’ve been so wrapped up in my own anxieties that I couldn’t see you were struggling too.” Rung thumbed the plating over the complex gears of Starscream’s shoulder. “You don’t have to trick us into making room for you. You don’t have to sneak into our lives. Our home is already your home. Our lives are already yours.”

“He’s your _ conjunx. _ ” Starscream muttered. “I’m your _ nothing. _ What’s left for me if I’m not your amica and I’m not your conjunx? What can I possibly be for you?”

Rung reached out and pulled himself even closer, looping his arm underneath a wing. “Oh, darling,” he said. “You’re my _ Starscream.” _

That silenced Starscream for a few moments, long enough that Rung dared to hope that he’d broken through, resolved the fear and envy that had been eating away at Starscream’s spark. But then Starscream made a mulish noise and said: _ “Your _ Starscream. I suppose. But Megatron doesn’t even _ like _me.”

Rung got up.

Starscream whined protestingly as he lost Rung’s warmth, and Megatron grunted sleepily when Rung started patting him awake again, but Rung persisted.

“I’m trying to recharge,” growled Megatron, at last. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Yes, yes, you can recharge.” Rung pried up one of Megatron’s arms. “Starscream needs to be held, that’s all.”

“I’m _ fine,” _snapped Starscream, but Megatron groaned and blindly dragged Starscream in against his chassis, ignoring Starscream’s performative flailing. He wrapped an implacable arm around Starscream’s shoulder, pinning Starscream with his face in Megatron’s neck. 

“That’s it,” murmured Rung. “Megatron, do you like Starscream?”

“Hmm?” Megatron onlined one optic again. “Can’t frag anymore. Tired.”

“No, that’s not—” Rung tsked to himself. “Megatron, Starscream’s worried that you don’t really love him.”

“Mmm.” Megatron’s optic blinked off again.

Starscream’s mouth was tight, and his optics looked terrified, their color shifting anxiously between crimson and dull red. Rung stilled his vents.

“Don’t...hnn. Ridiculous,” said Megatron, at last. He rested his chin on top of Starscream’s helm. “You’re mine. Of course. Love you.” He sighed, long and deep, and promptly fell asleep again.

Starscream still looked terrified, but he cautiously brought up one arm to wrap over Megatron’s waist. “You’ve finally broken him,” he muttered. “He’ll just say he loves _ anyone _now.”

“I doubt it,” said Rung. “But we can test it in the morning, if you like. Who should we ask him about? Ratchet? Optimus?”

Starscream snorted and finally, finally, lost some of that tightness. He clutched a little closer at Megatron’s frame, and his optics flickered and dimmed.

Rung couldn’t help it—he took an image capture. His conjunx and their Starscream, on the evening of the happiest day of his life.

Then he stopped being a witness and became a participant again, climbing back into berth. He tucked himself against Starscream’s back, his helm resting between Starscream’s wings, and let his engine synch with Starscream’s own.

“I don’t understand,” mumbled Starscream. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. We’re not supposed, we’re—did you _ hear _ Deadlock’s awful fidelity toast? I’m not supposed to be part of this. This _ you. _ You’re supposed to be _ mad _ at me.”

“I didn’t start loving you because it was _ easy,” _ said Rung. “Not either of you. But we’re happy now, aren’t we? Against all odds. I don’t care—” He pushed down a gasp as something deep and sore and satisfying snapped into place inside his spark. “I don’t care how it’s _ supposed _ to work—I’m not giving up on that, and I’m not giving up on us.”

Starscream vented the soft deep vents that Aglet had taught him to regulate his emotions. Rung felt his spark fill, almost bursting through his seams with light.

“Megatron has to help me with my vanity table,” said Starscream, his voice almost back to its normal insouciance. “It’s too heavy for me to carry on my own, and I’m not paying the Constructicons when Megatron is right here.”

“We can ask him in the morning,” said Rung. “Darling, does that mean—?”

“Yeah,” said Starscream. “Yes, I’m saying yes. I’ll move in. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”

“Of course not.” Rung stretched so he could put his arm over Starscream’s waist and touch Megatron’s hip, the three of them connected as one. “Never. You’re stuck with me now.”

“Good,” muttered Megatron, startling Rung—and Starscream too, if the wing bashing down on Rung’s shoulder was any indicator. “Now _ go to sleep.” _

Rung waited until he was sure that Starscream was drowsing, and then followed instructions and off-lined his own optics. His processor began shutting down immediately, exhausted by the day, all of its emotions and all of its aftermath. All of the life he’d been so lucky to have. In the last moment before he cut sensory processing, there was only the warmth of Megatron’s frame under Rung’s hand, and the soft living sound of Starscream’s gears ticking under Rung’s audial.

In that moment, Rung finally understood the meaning of peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starscream: oh, you want to play? You want to fucking play?? I'll just stand on this table and yell and then maybe we'll make out afterwards!!!  
Deadlock: what was that last part  
Rung: ok I think it's time to move on

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Your pretty girl, when you want it](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25988524) by [towards_morning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/towards_morning/pseuds/towards_morning)


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